The Dark Side of Man

I feel that the poems are all connected in that they all show a dark, ugly side of humans. In the Brooks poem, we see the shame and guilt felt by a mother who aborted her unborn child. She communicates the sadness and helplessness that I imagine every woman who has an abortion must feel. I know that I I ever had an abortion I would never stop wondering what great things that child would grow up to do. My favorite line is "If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate." I can feel her desperation when she was getting the abortion. She was probably very young and scared and felt that there was no other choice. This poem has such a sadness and genuine emotion about it. I really dig it. The poem by Ms. Angelou highlights the deteriorating condition of this world and the people in it. The loneliness and the self centered attitudes of everyone. But she is also sending out the message that "nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone." The singular attitude that many people possess may not hold them back from having monetary gain, but it won't save your soul. As with the example of the millionaire. He has all his riches but his family is falling apart. He doesnt even care enough to fix it. This is so true in today's world. Hollywood showcases many of these dysfunctional families. We should heed the message she sends out. Everybody needs somebody sometimes. This poem is deep. The last poem, by Rosario Castellanos, I believe, illustrates our inner evil. It shows that feelings of hatred are far stronger than feelings of love. There is a saying that we always hurt the ones we love. I'm not sure but I think the part of the poem about drawing breath from someone else's lungs exemplifies this. We always want to lean on our loved ones and expect them to save us. This ties in with the Angelou poem as far as that selfish attitude. On the other hand, when we dwell on hatred, we are only allowing it to grow. We become fixated on it and allow it to devour us. I love the analogy of the deer seeing the reflection of the tiger in the water as he drinks. I dont know if he sees the reflection behind him or if he sees it instead of his own reflection. I like to think its the latter because when you harbor hatred for you enemy, after a while you become the very thing you hate most. And by giving in to hatred, you are becoming its accomplice. All of the poems were very interesting and informative. I just hope I'm not completely off with these analyses.

THOUGHTS on the three poems by Luisana S.

1. "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks.
"If I stole your births and your names, your straight baby tears and your names,..., your marriages, aches, and your deaths".
This line makes me really sad. I think that abortion is paid with sorrow, guilt, and solitude. It makes me sad to think that these unborn babies wont have the opportunity we had to see the beautiful light of the sun, and to feel the air and breath it. They wont have the chance to feel love or to be loved. It is unfair to take their rights away. I feel guilty because I cant do nothing to stop these crimes. It is incredible to see and to know that there are people with no sentiments, or morality. I dont think these people are going to experience the blessing of giving life to another human being. I think the guilt wont let them be as happy as they should be. In my opinion, giving birth is a blessing that many people have, and those that cant have it might even die for it.

2. "Alone" by Maya Angelou.
"Nobody but nobody cant make it out here alone".
This line made me think of many things, such as not having someone by my side when I get older, or becoming a bad mother, what would happen to me if I turned to be sterile?; these are thoughts I had when I read this line. I love kids, I love taking care of them, It is only the diapers that get me nauseas. I think about what type of mother I will be in the future. Will my children abandon me? Will they get tired of me? Will I end up 'Alone'? I want to be like my mother, she is the best mother ever, and I will never leave her alone, or abandon her. I think you children are the ones that stay by your side, and take care of you when you cant take care of yourself. They dont let you die in a solitude. I dont think a person can "make it out here alone".

3. "Destiny" by Rosario Castellanos.
"We give life only to what we hate".
I dont agree with this line. I think that we have the virtue of living, not because our mother hated us, but because they love us. My mother loves me and my little brothers, and I love her back. But my question is: why would you hate something that doesnt have breathing, and that is not living yet? I think about this all over again, and I truly dont find a logic.

Thanks for reading.

Man is an animal of solitudes...

The Mother - An abortion can be a traumatic experience for some women. I believe that every woman that goes through that experience will always have the presence of her child in her mind. They killed an innocent life. No one has the right to take away somebody else’s right to live and choose. Too bad that those innocent beings can’t have the right to choose whether to live or die. In the poem The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks we come across with this particular subject: abortion. Brooks describes the feelings of a mother that decided to abort her baby and how she regrets of doing such a crime.
Alone – Just imagine yourself living a world without friends or people that care about you. It would be a dull and lonely place to live. The poem Alone by Maya Angelou represents how people need affection from other people. People can’t jus live in a world where nobody cares for no one. Even if you are poor but if you have someone that cares about you that’s enough. As Angelou stated there are people with a lot of money but without a happy life they just live a miserable life because they don’t even have time to spend with their love ones. The only thing these people care is about making and saving money for a future. You need to enjoy what you have in the present because you never know what is going to happen in the future. The words in this poem are so powerful and kind of easy to analyze because people can easily relate to some time in their lives to the emotional state of loneliness.
Destiny – It’s really easy to kill what we love just not to kill ourselves. We can hate and love at the same time. We can love with hate. It’s like a love+hate relationship. Monotony, Infidelity, apathy, etc can kill love, but love can still survive but not with the same strength that had at the beginning of a relationship. This is how an affectionate relationship turn into a love hate relationship, you can still love your partner but you can never forget the flaws of love. Love doesn’t stay the same it just simply transforms that’s when we start to kill Love. Affectionate love doesn’t last forever.

Do not let your past to destroy the future.

What is it to be a mother? My friends who have children tell that it is the most amazing thing in the life – to have a baby, to feel a new life growing inside of you. Nothing can be compared to it. Sooner or later the maternity instinct wakes up inside every woman, but beside the instincts there are social, financial or other issues, that make it impossible to have a baby. How often do we hear now from women that they need to do the career first, or that the time is not right or I do not have enough money to provide myself? What if she did get pregnant? Abortion? It is very touchy topic to discuss. I do not know if its right or wrong- each situation is different. Some women may never forgive themselves and this decision will affect all their life. In any way I think it is up to woman to decide to keep the pregnancy or not. Gwendolyn Brooks in her poem “The Mother” describes the woman’s feelings after abortion, her regrets and anger. I have a friend who had abortion and was able to recover and to start a new life. She had 5 years relationship back home in Ukraine, but it was not working out. They broke up and she decided to leave the country. Luckily she got visa to US, but she discovered she was pregnant. She did abortion and could not forgive herself for a long time. Two years ago she met a guy, fell in love with him. They got married and had a beautiful baby-girl this May. She told me no matter how hard it was back then, she made a right decision. We all make mistakes or decisions, that might be wrong, but the biggest mistake will be to let the past to destroy the present and the future. I do not judge anybody; it’s not for me to decide what is right or what is wrong for another person. Nobody’s life is easy. We all need support at one point or another, because: “nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone”

journal entry - three pomes

The three poems: The Mother, Alone and Destiny writhen by three women. Poems: By Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou and Rosario Castellanos respectively talk about what it is to be a women ,all three poems are strong on facts and emotional it would be hard not to be affected by them. Take for example” The Mother” it talks about a woman who had more than one abortion however she cant forget any of those babies who as she says can be a singers or ordinary workers she cant forgot at the fact that she prevented these babies from ever being breastfeed patted on their head, disciplined of bribed
with sweets not only that she is responsible for the facts that these babies will never experience love, marriage or pain she is responsible for them never breathing or ever dying. She asked herself… “Why should I whine that the crime was other than min?”
The woman therefore admits that she alone was responsible for the abortions of her babies. However, she does not say why she was force to have abortions. She asks these babies to believe her that she was not totally set determinate pregnancies.
“Believe that in my deliberateness I was not deliberate”. She asked them to believe her that although she knows them “faintly” she loved all of them.
I never imagined that one can write about so many details about the babies that are aborted. I always imagined that a woman would regret doing having an abortion but that there would be just one deep, deep pain for her. Certainly as a woman and as a mother I sympathize with this woman who was only mother to be. It is my good luck than I never had to experience these tip (kind) of pain. I always expected to be a mother I m happy that my expectations came true.

As to the second poem “Alone “ By Maya Angelou my cousin’s life comes to mind she is a sole breadwinner for herself and for her children. Many times she talks to me about being in the terrible financial situation ,she is working over time but can’t have enough money to pay her own bills. My cousin wishes just like in the poem that she could find some one who could help her financial. She is in a total despair because as I’m concerned it is not only financial trouble that she has deal with.
In her numbers talk to me. I came to the conclusion that she is too lonely. Many times she tolled me how she longs for another close human been who would helpfully to face her everyday duties. It is the universal condition of human beings desire to how contacts, and help from another human been. Whether is one poor or reach ones need to be connected with another human been.

In the poem “Destiny” by Rosario Castellanos the woman is totally depressed. She sees no hope for herself, her pain is unbearable. She wishes that there could be another human been perhaps a man who could share her pain with her that suffocates her. Not sooner she thinks that, she becomes convinced that nobody could unburden her of her pain. No one would even hear her call for help, because she decides that there is no point in her asking for help she tells herself “Man is an animal of solitudes”.
I think that the reality is that man i.e. everyone should try to be connected with other human beings.
As to her refrain “we kill what we love may possible mean that we destroy our self while we should love ourselves.
“ We kill what we love” may mean that we kill another person although we love that person it would be great if someone could explain this refrain to me or the reference to deer in the tiger in these poem.
In any case I sympathize with this woman too.

Motherhood

"The mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks touches on the issue of abortion. Gwendolyn Brooks focuses on how the mothers would feel after the abortions. I feel the mother anger and regret. She is angry of herself for having the abortion. She is angry that she was not brave enough to have the baby. She is regretful now for not having the baby to hold and to nurture. She wishes she could have one child now. She imagines the baby's images as if it is so close to her "Your straight baby tears and your games, your stilted or lovely love, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths." The sin of having an abortion will follow her for the rest of her life, just like my friend's case. My friend was 19 years old when she was 1 month pregnant. It was an accident, she said. After days of thinking and talking over with her boyfriend, she decided to have an abortion. I personally think that it was a good idea. She was here all by herself, and it was hard enough for her to take care of herself. How was it possible for her to take care of someone else, a child? Rather than giving birth to the child and raising him/her in a hard way, she made a good choice of "killing" the baby at one month old. Even though it was a good decision, the sin of killing her own child still follows her and she cries every time someone mentions it.

The Love For Life

Gwendolyn brooks poem about abortion is beautiful and meaningful, the way that she describes the feelings related with this type of action. She describes vividly how the baby cries or looks for food all the way to planning and experiencing things later in life, and that all of these things the child will never experience. Her poem is incredibly honest and open. It would seem almost like an addmission of guilt for doing something were this girl had no choice, maybe due to circumstances out of her control. She explains that even though the baby is taken out before it is fully grown, that she still felt a deep connection even though she never met the baby. Alone, by Maya Angelou, is a poem about the needs that everyone has. That even though we feel that we are on this earth just for ourselves, we can't forget that the reason that we are able to do what we do is because of the people around us, and the people that were before us that made the mistakes that we don't have to make. She explains that a rich man has a heart of stone, because he spends all of his time creating wealth, while his family suffers. Explaining that in this life we have to lean on each other. Rosario Castellanos poem called Destiny, is a beautiful poem about the way that people react when they love something. That people draw all the energy out of this thing until there is nothing left. That by loving something is to dominate and eventually kill it, so that you devour that love. In life today you see this all the time in the way that people react in some relationships. They feel that just because they declare their love for someone, that they have the right to be abusive to thing they that their supposed to love.