Characters in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks

Paper Summary:

This paper shows how Gwendolyn Brooks uses the daily experiences and struggles of her characters to comment on important issues, such as the societal views of women, race, and the poverty found in the inner city through her poetry. The paper looks at the poems, "The Hunchback Girl," "Sadie and Maud," and "The Mother," among others.

From the Paper:

"Brooks describes a similar longing for unfulfilled dreams in her poem "kitchenette building". In the poem she describes the hardships of daily life in a black urban environment. It begins with "We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, / Grayed in, and gray. "Dream" makes a giddy sound, not strong / Like 'rent,' 'feeding a wife,' 'satisfying a man'" (Brooks 20). The terms "things" and "dry hours" portray the emptiness of their place in society, while "involuntary plan" describes the speaker's disappointment with life and the ache of responsibilities in place of forgotten dreams (Melhern 22)".

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