“The Mother”
The poem is filled with life 's small ironies down to the title ,“The Mother,” by reading the poem we know the speaker is not a mother in the literal sense her pregnancies ended in abortion through the monologue she addressed her children who were never born and reveals her feeling and justifications as if the children were in her presence. The first ten lines are in couplets, after which the rhyme scheme becomes irregular. Brooks maintains her freedom to vary line length and rhythm for effect."The Mother" is presented through first-person narration from the perspective of a female whose racial identity is not stated; even though, the poem was published in “A Street in Bronzeville” where the subjects of the poems are predominantly …show more content…
Brooks sculpts and molds the English language to tell a story every word has its place and meaning. The first ten lines of the poem are less personal than the rest of the poem using the second person “you” after the tenth line the speaker shifts from “you” to “I” the tone of the poem strengths as to convey the guilt the speaker feels. In the poem the everywoman asks two questions, the first, “...even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.... Whine that the crime was other than mine?” the “mother” attempts to justify herself by shifting blame, to who she does not say, were her actions not her own, was society to blame for her abortions. In the 1940s around the time that Mrs. Brooks wrote and published “The Mother” abortion was illegal, the poem received much criticism because it touched on a taboo topic at the time. The knowledge that what this “mother” did was deemed illegal by the government just adds to the plot of the poem, it begs one to wonder, how desperate was she that she broke the law, just how where her abortions …show more content…
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.” Both of these questions she never answers the answer she provides is one without question; the love that she had for her children “...I Loved
The poem is filled with life 's small ironies down to the title ,“The Mother,” by reading the poem we know the speaker is not a mother in the literal sense her pregnancies ended in abortion through the monologue she addressed her children who were never born and reveals her feeling and justifications as if the children were in her presence. The first ten lines are in couplets, after which the rhyme scheme becomes irregular. Brooks maintains her freedom to vary line length and rhythm for effect."The Mother" is presented through first-person narration from the perspective of a female whose racial identity is not stated; even though, the poem was published in “A Street in Bronzeville” where the subjects of the poems are predominantly …show more content…
Brooks sculpts and molds the English language to tell a story every word has its place and meaning. The first ten lines of the poem are less personal than the rest of the poem using the second person “you” after the tenth line the speaker shifts from “you” to “I” the tone of the poem strengths as to convey the guilt the speaker feels. In the poem the everywoman asks two questions, the first, “...even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.... Whine that the crime was other than mine?” the “mother” attempts to justify herself by shifting blame, to who she does not say, were her actions not her own, was society to blame for her abortions. In the 1940s around the time that Mrs. Brooks wrote and published “The Mother” abortion was illegal, the poem received much criticism because it touched on a taboo topic at the time. The knowledge that what this “mother” did was deemed illegal by the government just adds to the plot of the poem, it begs one to wonder, how desperate was she that she broke the law, just how where her abortions …show more content…
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.” Both of these questions she never answers the answer she provides is one without question; the love that she had for her children “...I Loved