the mother

With its title purposefully written in all lowercase letters to emphasize humility, "the mother" is a poem about a woman who acknowledges the children she would have had if she had decided not to...

The speaker in Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “the mother” is a woman who seems to have had multiple abortions but who also seems to be haunted by the choices she made to abort her “children” (2). These...

The tone of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “the mother” is extremely complex. The tone of the opening line – “Abortions will not let you forget” – can be read as regretful and as offering a kind of warning...

In her poem, "The Mother," Brooks is skilled at bringing out the complexity in the title character. Brooks is not too keen on making judgments or creating a setting where arbitrary and simple...

"The Mother" is a complex poem in which the narrator mourns the loss of the children whom she has aborted. A potential thesis statement might deal with the way she grapples with her loss. What are...

The speaker presents us with a list of natural phenomena, all of which are characterized by multiplicity. So, for example, he starts off by telling us that there are hundreds of stars in the pretty...

Thanks for the clarification! What I mean here when I talk about structuralism is an approach that looks at a large number of stories (or other short pieces) and seeks to identify the overarching...

"The Mother" is Brooks' portrait of a poor woman who has experienced the challenging conditions of material reality and psychological condition. In the poem, Brooks pays attention to the...

"The Mother" is a poem about abortion in which the narrator laments her children "never made." While nurturing children, including feeding, is a central facet of motherhood, here the food imagery...

Gwendolyn Brooks's "the mother" is a poem narrated by the eponymous mother. The mother reflects on the abortions that she has chosen to have and on the lives of the babies that were never born. In...

In order to understand Gwendolyn Brooks' part in her poem entitled, "The Mother," one must understand what "dramatic persona" actually is. Dr. L. Kip Wheeler provides a definition of the "persona"...

Writers construct literary personalities, which can be more or less obvious. When Edgar Allan Poe adopts the persona of a madman to write a short story, no reader thinks he expressing his own...

I think that Brooks is deliberate in not rhyming all of the lines in the poem. Consider the first line where we see a breaking of the rhyme scheme: I have heard in the voices of the wind the...

The speaker in the poem "the mother" is addressing all the children she has aborted in the past. She speaks to them with a mixture of regret and confusion as she considers all of the life...

I think that the setting is a modern and urban condition. Perhaps, using Brooks' own literary background might help here: The city is an important and recurring symbol in Brooks’s work. She has...

In this poem, the speaker is a woman who has had multiple abortions in her life. She says that one does not forget "the children you got that you did not get," the children one conceived but did...

At its simplest, “the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a poem about abortion. It’s a powerful free-verse poem that looks at the divisive topic from a human perspective. Brooks describes its effects...

I think that one of the most important features in Brooks' poem is the vision of the subject. The way in which the mother's character is developed in the poem is a powerful one. Brooks creates a...