‘The Mother’ by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortion is an issue that has brought about arguments over the last decade. There are two sides to the debate, there are those that argue that a woman has a right to do what she wants with her body and so they support abortion. There are those others that argue that life begins after conception and so abortion is murder and they are hence against abortion. However arguments on abortion should basically be left for the women to decide what they want because at the end of the day, they are the ones that experience it. ‘The Mother’ by Gwendolyn Brooks is a poem that cannot really be classified to be against or for abortion. This is a poem that basically narrates the experiences of a mother that undergoes an abortion; she regrets her decision because she loves being a mother. But she also argues that what she did was necessary and there was nothing she could have done about it. The narrator of the poem is a mother who is very poor and she help to illustrate how abortion denies a woman the chance to experience motherhood and how it affects them emotionally.

‘The Mother’ is a free verse poem that has no prescribed form. It has no regular meter and its lines vary in length. Application of the free verse concept allows for rhyme to be deployed and withheld where necessary. Rhyme hence becomes a way for the readers to track the emotional state of the speaker all through the poem. There are those moments when this mother is hopeful and resolved, in this case rhyme flows and there are those times when she is doubtful and exhausted, lack of rhyme helps to reflect these moments.

In the first stanza, the mother explains how the decision of having an abortion haunts one forever. The mother defines how abortion denies one the chance to see her children grow and experience parenthood. ‘You remember the children you got that you did not get, you will never neglect,  beat them, or silence or buy with a sweet’ (line 2-6). She indicates that the decision to undergo an abortion causes the emotional and intimate connections that are made between a child and a parent to become non-existent.

The second stanza is more expressive as the mother speaks in first person about how the abortion causes her to feel like a murderer. ‘I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach (line 2-6). She feels like she killed her children without even getting a chance to see and take care of them. In this stanza, a detailed description is given on how a mother experiences the concept of motherhood and the feelings that comes with being a mother. In line (11) she indicates ‘Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate’ in this section, the mother seems to regret her decision to undergo an abortion indicating that it was not a well thought out decision. She however indicates that the mistake that she already committed cannot be reversed and so she has to accept what she did and move on.

The last part of the poem is an indication of how much she wanted to have the children even though she had an abortion.  In line (1), she indicates ‘Believe me, I loved you all’, the use of the world ‘all’ is an indication that having this mother had several abortions and they were not intentional, she only did it because she had no other choice.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in the year 1917 in Kansa but later moved to Chicago. She published her first poem at the age of 13 and it is when her career in poetry began. Her poems were meant to give voices to the marginalized voiceless people in the society especially the black people. Her concept however changes as she grew older and she became more political and this is what motivated her to write the poem ‘the mother’. This poem was written years after abortion was legalized and by writing this poem, Gwendolyn was showcasing her feminist nature. She used this poem to bring to light the emotional effects of legalizing abortion on the mothers. She used this poem to give women a voice to tell their story and experiences with abortion.

This poem is about the experience of a female, it is based on the experiences of a woman aborting a child and the personal guilt that comes after. This is a poem that has often been championed by those that speak against and for abortion. This poem provides an easy interpretation but at the same time offers a look at the problems and the issues that come with abortion debates. The narrator of this poem is a mother and this can be illustrated by her sensitive, sentimental and loving way of expressing concepts in the poem. She sounds like an experienced mother who has been through the process of bringing up a child and so she understands the pleasures that come with raising a child. Phrases such as ‘winding the sucking thumb’ and ‘scuttling off the ghost’ suggest her experience as a mother. This is a poem about loss and the attempt that mothers make to refresh the memories of their children that die through their choices to undergo an abortion. Addressing the children directly is a way for the mothers to keep the memories of these children alive even though they did not get the chance to actually live.

 This poem is an illustration of some of the psychological torments that women who commit abortion go through. Going through an abortion is wrong and this fact is supported by this poem. It denies a child the chance to experience the pleasures of childhood and it also robs a woman a chance to experience motherhood. Even though women that undergo abortion always have their reasons for doing it, this does not ever erase the effects that it has on their lives. Abortion is wrong and every woman should always try to avoid it under all circumstances. As is illustrated in the poem, abortion is something that will always haunt mothers the rest of their lives, thinking about what would have become of these children that they denied a chance to live. A child deserves to live and experience the pleasures that come with childhood; it is the role of a mother to give them this chance by bringing them into the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Brooks, Gwendolyn. “The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry

Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43309/the-mother-56d2220767a02.