The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks

The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks
There are a good number of issues in the world that stand unsolved. The debates on some of them are on for ever and ever but a feasible solution has never risen in the horizon. The most prominent among these perennial issues is abortion. It is a topic that has been subjected to serious debate across all the parts of the world. However, so far we have arrived at a convincing answer to believe abortion to be secure and justified or as a heinous crime of the humanity. We have mixed responses, as the topic sways between religious and social perspectives. Gwendolyn Brooks in her poem “Mother” pays tribute to the unborn souls, whose lives were brought to an end by abortion.

She begins the poem by addressing the mothers, who have been subjected to abortions. She say that though the mothers have aborted children but the memory of those unborn ones will never fade away from their memory.
“The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air”.
Mothers can not forget these little ones that they carried for awhile. Brooks is very creative in her presentation of the concept. She says that as the children aborted were not given a chance to realize their full potentialities, the world can not be sure of what they would have become, if you were allowed to grow. Hence, she calls them as ‘singers and workers’. A touch of satire and irony is very much seen in her presentation of the topic. She says that these are the children, who did not give their mothers a chance to scold them, to silence them with sweets, to threaten by faking ghosts or to punish them for their meanness. It is a indirect hit at the mothers, as they missed the chance to nurse and to enjoy the angelic innocence of these children. Thus, the very beginning of the poem satirizes on the concept of abortion.

Brook’s continues to present the severity of abortion in the second stanza as well. But here there is a change in the approach. The second stanza sounds more of a confession of a mother, who has deprived many children of their basic right to life. I believe that the main intention of Brook, at this juncture, would be to emphasize on the fact that every woman, who have been responsible for the lose of unborn lives in the world, must feel sorry for their act and must cautious of not doing the same mistake again. The foresightedness of Brook finds a clear expression in the second stanza. She seeks forgiveness from the children for the entire range of prospects that she wiped away from the lives of the unborn souls, beginning from their birth till their death. The fact that she pays attention to even minute details is evident by the fact that she seeks the forgiveness of the aborted children for the names that they were deprived of. She is profuse in her apology and it is evident by her words that though the act of abortion was a deliberate one, the woman did not mean to deliberately hurt the little life and to deprive it of the privileges of life.
“Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate”.
This line clearly reveals the poet’s genuine concern for human life and the entire poem makes evident the poet’s insatiable thirst for human welfare.

In the third stanza, there is yet again a change of perspective. The poet penetrates the heart of the convulse emotions that pervade the heart of a woman in confusion. She is a dilemma not knowing to exactly figure out the rightness or the wrongness of her action. She is divided within herself. A part of her urges her seek the forgiveness of the souls that were deprived of their basic rights of survival. On the other, the other side of her, attempts to justify her action. An apology is not required as the past is past and no confession would bring back those little souls alive. The woman gets torn apart by her contrasting emotions.
“But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?”
These lines clearly bring to the forefront the deep-seated emotions that torment her. Thus the poem becomes an amalgamation of longing, guilt, and a moral dilemma.

Maddened by the contrasting views that torment her conscience the woman arrives at a common stand. She confesses her inability to discern. However, she wishes to drive home a point that whatever be the situation that made abortion necessary, it was not a complete neglect of human life. The woman pleads to the buried souls that she loved them all.
“Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.”
These lines stand as a symbol of the mental agony that the woman is subjected to. Thus the entire poem can be considered as obituary to the unborn souls. The world has deprived them of their god given rights to live and to flourish. More worse is that the world does not even realize their acts of sinfulness. It is right time that the world recognized abortion as a heinous act. The implication of the poem can not be that abortion must be totally annihilated but people must be conscious of the deed and must strive at all cost to bring low the number of abortions carried out every hour. Thanks to the modern improvised medicinal practices that the number of abortions that are on a slow decrease.