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  • Essay / Theme of abortion in “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks and “The Poem of the Lost Baby” by Lucille Clifton

    “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks and “The Poem of the Lost Baby” by Lucille Clifton describe all the filling a woman experiences after having an abortion. This poem is about abortion and the narrator used the mother's point of view to express her feelings about how she felt after aborting her unborn child. The mother felt very bad and remorseful for what she had done. Furthermore, Lucille Clifton's poem shows that a young mother fully regrets and feels guilty about her child whom she lost due to an abortion. Although the story doesn't actually indicate that she had an abortion. There are many ways to express the poet's intentions and how they fit together. The poet uses many images with such intensity that a person reading them can almost feel the coldness of winter cold. Both authors' poems assert that even after death, the bond between a mother and her child can never be broken, even after death. In addition, there are sociocultural factors that can lead these women to abortion. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay On the surface, “The Mother” is a poem about a mother who has suffered a number of abortions and is now remorseful. She regrets but explains that she had no other choice. It's a heartfelt poem in which she talks about how she won't be able to do certain things for the children she aborted. Specifically, in the poem “The Mother,” Gwendolyn Brooks describes all the filling that a woman experiences after an abortion. In her poem, she states, “Abortions won’t make you forget,” even if women decide to “kill the child,” that decision “never goes away.” Brooks also talks about how acknowledging the child's presence has a deeper impact on his statements: "the children you had and didn't have." Additionally, she describes what would have become of her children and how she will miss the fun of raising the child when she says "never end up sucking your thumb." In fact, every mother feels guilty about the abortion and suffers from her act, but that is why other people have to judge her. This is a sad reality! Everyone must imagine themselves in “the mother’s” place and feel the guilt and pain she feels. Her pain is so deep that she considers herself her murderer, “My slain children”. In her poem, Brooks discusses the sacred experience of being a mother and everything she feels on the path to motherhood. She states: “If I poisoned the beginning of your breaths, believe that even in my will, I was not deliberate… You were never created. But that too, I'm afraid. » In these lines she repeats her decision to abort, which at first seems well planned, it was not well planned and was not thought through enough because she did not know what she was doing. would take away from him. “I contracted. I relieved” the materialization of the child in her womb made her suffering more real and deeper. Like a typical "woman", this speaker is very sensitive, loving and sentimental. As an experienced mother who has experienced the process of birthing and raising a child, she is very familiar with the typical experiences and pleasures of having and raising a child. Details in the poem like "Will never end up sucking the thumb" or "keep away the ghost that comes" are things that strikingly suggest that she is experiencing at least all the typical experiences of a mother with a child. Despite her decision to abort them, she proclaims her love for them and how her connection to herchild can never be broken even if she decided to abort the child and it was social circumstances that led her to abort. Similarly, Lucille Clifton was inspired by “the mother” and wrote her poem “The Lost Baby Poem” as she mourns an absent presence: the lost baby. She describes her emotion and how she aborted her baby, forced by poverty. In every line of the poem, she displays her guilt and regret for the "lost baby." She says: "The time I dropped your almost body to meet that water under the city and make one flow with the sewage to the sea, what did I know about water flowing back, what about drowning or drowning.” In these lines, she feels unapologetic towards herself and the act she has committed. In fact, in life we ​​don't always do things we really want to do, but things we really think are right. The same thing can happen with a mother with a baby, she may make the decision she thinks is right for the baby, even if she wants something different. It’s motherhood with or without a baby. Additionally, in the lost baby poem, Clifton attempts to justify his actions and says that "the lost baby" should have been born in poverty and cold. She said: “You would have been born in winter, the year of the gas cut-off and no car.” However, at the end of the poem, she admits her act and makes a promise: "If ever I am less than a mountain to your final brothers and sisters, may the rivers pour over my head, may the sea take me for a spiller of seas”, she says that good will punish her if she makes the same mistake towards the other children. The important decision regarding abortion made by the two mothers in Brooks and Clinton's poem cannot be fully understood without knowledge of the social and cultural factors in which both authors wrote the poem. Patriarchal society, poverty, racism are some of the factors that can push women to have an abortion. DH Melhem writes in his article that Brooks "felt the stressor in [the mother's] poem and it was not the abortion but the poverty that created ambivalence in the mother, thwarting her maternal desire." Poverty is the most common reason women give for wanting an abortion, and at the time Brooks wrote the poem, poverty was extreme. Additionally, Courtney Thorsson mentions in her article that "in his early and mid-career writings, Brooks describes individual and private experience as a sphere of black action with broad community involvement." She says “energetic community practices occur primarily in domestic spaces.” Additionally, she gives the example of a woman making breakfast during the murder of Emmet Till to explore the connections between racism and sexism. Brooks uses the struggles of poor motherhood to comment on the blocked lives of adult black women. Brooks discusses and describes many of the cruel and unjust treatments that African Americans have faced throughout our civilization. Brooks not only talks about the racial prejudices of African Americans, but she also touches on the sorrows, lives, and growth of African Americans as a people. Brooks uses the symbol of death several times in his poem to show that in the mother's imagination, these babies still exist and grow, function, and die even though she knows they are dead. Karen J. Ford in her article "This old writing paper blues: the blues stropha and literary poet" states that Brooks in his poems "invokes a distinction between Anglo-European poetic forms and African-American expression which is less eloquent of the fact of such distinction.” that by its usefulness in.