We Real Cool We-Left School Analysis

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Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American poet born on, “June 17th, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas” (“Gwendolyn Brooks”). Gwendolyn Brooks grew up in Chicago, Illinois with her mother and her brother. In her writing career she often sought inspiration and constructive criticism from Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson. Johnson stated that, “she was indeed talented, but needed to acquaint with more modern poets” (“Gwendolyn Brooks Biography”). Brooks was the first, “black author to win the Pulitzer Prize” which was a huge honor for any author (“Gwendolyn Brooks”). Throughout her career Brooks published two popular collections of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, and Annie Allen. She also has a novel, Maud Martha, which was her first and only novel.…show more content…
The poem repeats, “we” 8 times, and the arrangement of words suggest the type of background the writer comes from. The word, “we” also provides the rhythm for the poem. The most important words in each sentence beginning with, “we” rhyme with word at the end of the next sentence. For example, “ We real cool. We/ left school” is the structure of the second stanza of the poem (“We Real Cool” Brooks 3-4). At the end of the poem the word, “die” breaks the pattern of the rhyming words. The players leaving school suggest that they are younger people obviously ditching school. Which also implies that the players are dying young. The tone of the poem is ironic because they are younger people taking part in older…show more content…
The tone of the poem is guilty as the narrator lists all the things the unborn child will never get to experience. The first parts of the poem is the narrator speaking to all mother who have aborted one or more of their children. The poem really raises the question of whether or not a mother is a mother if they got rid of their baby. It goes on to explain the guilt they will feel for that unborn child. In detail the narrator explains, “The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair” describing the unborn fetus that has just lost its life (“The Mother” Brooks 3). Later on, the narrator starts to talk to her children explaining how much she loved them even though she got rid of them. The first stanza of the poem has an, “AABB” rhyme scheme. The second stanza has a more spread out random rhyme scheme. The author of the poem took a unique route with introducing the subject of, “The Mother.”In other poems the subjects are addressed indirectly by using metaphors, but in this poem Brooks was very candid in addressing the topic. The poem also describes the potential child’s life and how they could be, “singers” and, “workers” (“The Mother” Brooks 4). The poem addresses a very sensitive subject that is still being debated in politics. Brooks’s later works started to take a political turn as she got older. “The Mother” was published in 1945, “almost thirty years before the
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