Analysis Of Prayer Before Birth By Louis Macneice

The theme in this poem shows this mother in many ways, is mourning the loss of children aborted for whatever the reasoning. This is known by the statement made in line 22 “Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate”. She also mourns the loss of things that will not reach their potential, such as the sound of a babies’ cry, and voice or even the loss of tears. Another conflict that emerges in the poem is the desire of the mother to do what is best for her children and the finality of her decisions.

first-born son. However, as Du Bois recalls, every time when he glances at his son’s gold hair and blue eyes, he would think about the Veil that prevents him and perhaps other Negroes from acknowledging who they are and how their souls are as precious as those of the white’s are. Du Bois’s manipulative sentence composition engages the readers to fully understand his position: hope does exist because the birth of new lives will inherit the black soul, but hope is unhopeful because what they are going to face is the endless and hopeless striving with the destiny that has trammeled them in the darkest corner in the world for years. So unpredictable is destiny that no one is convinced of the truth of “Hold On, Pain Ends.”

‘Prayer before Birth’ is a dark and disturbing poem written from the point of view of the unborn child who is preaching to God that when he is born, hoping he is not affected by the horrors of society. Macneice 's negative views towards current society are shown through the fetus’ spiteful thoughts; in the fifth stanza, Macneice lists how the unborn child wants to avoid ‘bureaucrats’ hectoring him, avoid being laughed at ‘by lovers’ and not be frowned at by ‘mountains’-this portrays how paranoid the fetus is. Not only is he worried about being judged by ordinary people, but also the landscape surrounding him. The influence of nature will affect his unspoilt unborn form, but he should not be looking at it pessimistically. One of the most powerful effects used by Macneice is the repetition of the phrase ‘I am not born yet.’ This emphasises the fact that he has not yet

I let my eyes wander out to the empty field outside, thinking of the future and the past. I part another chapter of my life to be a mother. Perhaps I am giving up my independence like sacrifices to please an angry god, or rather goddess. The answers are not all there, but at least one part of my world is established, a small but important comfort. I look towards the child one last time as if she were a mirage in a hot desert. She no longer cries in her father’s arms, voice and energy drained from its earlier tantrums into existence.

Brooks creates a horrific imagery that abortions are terrible; and in the poem “The Mother “,she mirrors herself to reality to show the missed opportunities of a child, that women who have aborted their children, will miss. In the poem, it pinpoints a woman’s experience of aborting a child, and then feeling guilty about it, as a mother. In contrast to the author of the poem, Gwendolyn Brooks is a woman who has also aborted a child numerous of times, feels relentless. She communicates with her audience, women, through the poem to recap what the unborn children would become in the future such as singers and workers. “You were born, you had body, you died. It is you never giggled or planned or cried.” When Brooks talk about the missed opportunities that women will never see, she refers to a mother with treacherous experiences. Symbolically, she reflects as a role model for all women who have undergone the situation.

What makes a child, a child goes hand in hand with the different models of childhood. Two out of the many models I chose to go in depth with are the “Sacred Child,” and “the Romantic Child.” There’s a distinction between the two models, however sharing the commonality of innocence. The Romantic Child is the idea that children should have the freedom to play, the love for childhood, to explore, and to imagine. They are bound to face some disappointment along their journey into adulthood. Theres the idea that “children see what adults can’t.” As for the Sacred Child, the child is viewed as precious and admired. So precious they are in need of protection. The idea that the children learn not to be risk takers, a sense of forgetfulness when it comes to problem solving. The

The tone of hopelessness in this poem is very obviously the result of regret, or the feelings of what motherhood may have been. For a majority of the poem the mother focuses on what their lives would have been having “never giggled or planned or cried” (4) or how they “will never wind up the sucking thumb” (4). Although these are only a few examples it is very evident how the mother, although denied the joy of motherhood, longs for the child she almost had, saying, “believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you/ All” (5). In an attempt to take a more positive outlook on the mother tries to justify herself saying how much better the child’s life would be, that as a mother she would never have the chance to “neglect or beat/ Them…” (4). The story behind “the mother” is just one example of hopelessness that Brooks prominently saw throughout her community, obviously this feeling of regret and lament was prevalent throughout many women who, although chose to have abortions, were not done out of not wanting the child, but by force in order to keep a job, house, or some other commitment in which carrying and properly raising a child would be near impossible.

Brooks’ “The Mother” focuses on the burden a mother goes through when having an abortion and giving recognition to the unborn child. Gwendolyn Brooks achieves this by primarily using underlying emotions and providing imagery of what the aborted baby could have been like as the speaker’s child. The narrative voice of “The Mother” uses different point of views throughout the poem and the word choice, both of which are used to portray the burden of guilt of having the operation.

The poem “The Mother” written by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945, is a poem that focuses on the immeasurable losses a woman experiences after having an abortion. The poems free verse style has a mournful tone that captures the vast emotions a mother goes through trying to cope with the choices she has made. The author writes each stanza of the poem using a different style, and point of view, with subtle metaphors to express the speaker’s deep struggle as she copes with her abortions. The poem begins with, “Abortions will not let you forget” (Brooks 1), the first line of the poem uses personification to capture your attention. The title of the poem has the reader’s mindset centered around motherhood, but the author’s expertise with the opening line, immediately shifts your view to the actual theme of the poem. In this first line the speaker is telling you directly, you will never forget having an abortion. Brooks utilizes the speaker of the poem, to convey that this mother is pleading for forgiveness from the children she chose not to have.

Furthermore, there are certain moments when Wiesel demonstrates that his faith in God is not completely lost. For example, when Rabbi Eliahu comes looking for his son, who was separated from him while running. Wiesel tells the Rabbi he did not see his son, but then later remembered seeing him losing ground when running and moved back to the rear of the column to get rid of his father. Wiesel realized the son had felt his father growing weaker and separated himself to increase his own chance of survival. In spite of himself, Wiesel prays to that God in whom he claims he lost faith in. In his prayer, Wiesel asks God for strength to never leave his father behind. He says, “Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what

The first stanza uses concrete imagery to depict a working man “with cracked hands that ached” (3), the speaker’s father, starting a fire. The second stanza starts with warm connotations of the fire rescuing his home from the cold; however, the stanza ends with the speaker expressing his fear, a figurative coldness, of “the chronic angers of that house” (9). The third stanza completes the epiphany that the final line of the first stanza, “No one ever thanked him” (5) hints at. It is at this point that the speaker understands that his father expresses his love differently. While the speaker was looking for an overt expression of his father’s love, his father, a working man, can only show his love with the means by which he is familiar. To the father, love is an expression of actions, actions that the speaker is oblivious to during his childhood. By the setting being early Sunday morning, it shows that the father’s actions, as a symbol of his love, are omnipresent and supersede his own desire for rest. The final lines of every stanza reflect the speaker’s growing realization that he was indeed loved by his father, that he initially didn’t recognize his father’s actions as an expression of this love, and that his obliviousness to this unfamiliar expression of love helped contribute to what

The babies being devoured, like Swift’s feelings of being devoured by leadership in society, stirs up emotions in both rich and poor people. This use of archetypal patterns and images (motherhood, birth, death, and rebirth) cause emotions in every reader no matter what their

It is possible that the narrator is trying to reassure herself in this passage by claiming that the child was never made, but then why write the poem to her unborn children?

An analysis of poems discussing the different ideas of infancy and what infancy and childhood means to different people. The ideas of infancy vary across the poems from being a curse to the family to being a blessing from the heavens or even a key to break out of the boundaries set by reality. The poets use various literary devices such as metaphors, similes and different poem structure to convey the message that they carry. Each poem has its own viewpoint on infancy. On the whole four of the poems, “Infant Joy” –William Blake, “You’re” – Sylvia Plath, “Once upon a time” – Gabriel Okara and “Piano” by D.H. Lawrence all have a more positive view towards infancy whereas, “ Infant Sorrow” – William Blake and “Prayer before birth” – Louis MacNeice show a more pessimistic side towards infancy. Despite the fact that each poem has its own different point of view on the subject of infancy, they all seem to share one thought which is the fact that infancy represents innocence and in some cases a fresh start.

The journal article Blake’s Infant Sorrow, by Ricks Carson, an english professor at Pace Academy, enlightens, “The child at the mother’s breast is an archetype of innocence, vulnerability, and spontaneous affection.” Even though Carson addresses the baby as innocent and finds the child to be a archetype relating to his mother, the infant also can be seen as suffering. In a way, this poem is laughing at the idea of Songs of Innocence. Blake, or the speaker, is harsh about the experience of being a child and refuses to be handled by his parents. Blake further states that the parents of the child treated him poorly throughout his childhood. The parents did not want the kid and was upset that they had a child. The father cried, the mother groaned, and the child was fussy. The poem is not very uplifting or positive, which means it fits perfectly with Blake’s collection, Songs of