A Watts Mother Mourns While Boiling Beans by Etheridge Knight When you read the poem written by Etheridge Knight it seems that you feel all emotional expressions of sorrow and anxiety the poet wanted to show to the readers. The beginning of the poem starts with a tender majesty. It embraces even the smallest tones of sorrow. The very sounds of it yell to attract attention; anxious, they remind us the frozen accords of the song of sorrow. The mother worries about the destiny of her child. Her son is the only consolation of her whole life.
She compares him with the blossoming flower of her life: The blooming flower of my life is roaming In the night, and I think surely That never since he was born Have I been free from fright In the poem A Watts mother mourns while boiling beans Etheridge Knight explores the themes of relations of mother and a son, the themes of maternal devotion, sorrow, grief, anxiety about the sons future, to mention a few. The whole poem bears acute, brightly expressed character of sorrow with meaningly underlined heart-rending mothers voice full of suffering. Both sad tones of the poem, words and word combinations lavish emotional pain upon the reader. It is evident that even in the presence of other themes the interpretation of Etheridge Knights poem objectively bears depressively monosemantic character. The word combinations are used masterly. From the very beginning the tenderness of relations mother-son strikes by its attractive and fetching tones, further the theme continues with gloomy tones of grief full of fire.
The Essay on Poems About Experiences Theme About Confessional Voices
Although these three poems are written by two very different authors, they both share a similarity in one aspect: they both confess to how the speakers truly look at their fathers. The first and second poems, "Daddy" and "Happy Father's Day," by Patrick Middleton, confess to feelings of regret, self-hatred, forgiveness, and a hidden love. However, Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" expresses a morbid hatred ...
No sooner the reader continues to read the lines, he found himself abstracted and submerged into the changing theme of anxiety. Now the experienced reader could expect for bright prelude of more optimistic word combinations, but in vain: further the main theme breaks into pieces of abrupt motives. The echo of the poem appears here and there: it shows the insignificantly tie-line role as well as in the role of other eluding motives that are so difficult to grasp. Even when the reader finally comes to feeling that he is able to understand the message Etheridge Knight wanted to deliver to her readers, when quite predictable moment of so-called repetition of the main theme of sorrow appears, the sense of depth of the poem doesnt last long and gives place to new melodic chain links. The theme of sorrow in the poem written by Etheridge Knight reminds us a comet where a huge tail consists of words-variants, words- sprouts that just tease the reader. The reader is tremendously tempted by Etheridge Knights words. Phrases create a whimsical chain of sorrow motives: they escape like a round dance that dissolves in a carnival procession.
Mothers sorrow is not artificial, specially made, custom-built sorrow. It is a real expression of emotional coloring that create no brilliantly-serene and untroubled verses. The inspiration for them one can draw from hope for happiness. A Watts mother mourns while boiling beans theme of sorrow is an embodied beautiful art of sight. Due to presence of additional themes masterly painted in literary water-colors, the song of sorrow is heard and seen as though at a tangent to a reader, from behind the corner. It contains the tones of happiness that disappeared off-camera, the tones of love to the son that appears as a joy for a moment that left a bright trace.
Such is the sorrow in interpretation of Etheridge Knight. As Stephen W. Baldwin notes, he learned to channel his voice through the common man. His poems touch the heart of any person who has experienced passion and emptiness, joy and hatred, or laughter and sorrow (Baldwin n.p.) It seems that the beauty of maternal love to the son cannot please the readers eye as it conceals the sorrow and grief, the intense expectation that something might happen with him. Mothers concerns are growing while she dwells on her son: My boy is bold, and his blood Grows quickly hot; even now He could be crawling in the street Bleeding out his life, likely as not. The mother begs her son to return home: Come home, my bold and restless son. – Stop My heart’s yearning! Yet, whatever will happen, she has her family duties and she has to fulfill them: But I must quit This thinking; my husband is coming, And the beans are burning These words, probably, didnt come easily to the mother. Yet, she couldnt avoid telling them, she plucked up all her courage and told them.
The Research paper on Clemente Chacon Life Mother Son
Dec 10, 2002 Chicano Lit Prof. Roberto Cantu Final Paper Clemente Chacon The book I chose for my research paper is Clemente Chacon by Jose Antonio Villarreal. This book deals with existential circumstances about a boy, which grows up on the Mexican side of the border and through crossing into the United States, he slowly rises into a high position in the Anglo-American business world. What is ...
Reading the last lines of the poem we feel a desperate woman in an inconsolable grief over her sons destiny. And the reader feels completely other, majestic ideal woman, a strong Mother, where the metaphor strong rather expresses the moral strength than the physical one.
Bibliography:
Baldwin, Stephen W.. Etheridge Knight – A Prisoner’s Approach to Working-Class Literature English 6923: Working Class Literature. Fall 2003. retrieved October 5, 2006. http://www.as.ysu.edu/~cwcs/Knight.htm Knight, Etheridge.
(1986).
The Essential Etheridge Knight. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press.
