Gwendolyn Brooks Lovers Of The Poor Analysis
“Lovers of the Poor”: An Illustration of the Social Divisions
PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has performed research on the teeth of human remains from about 5,500 BCE. The data they gathered led them to believe that, “a patrilocal kinship system, where women moved for marriage, and families of men stayed in the same place, retaining access to, and inheriting, the same land,” existed even in the time of cavemen. Meaning, since the beginning of time there has been a divide in the social hierarchy of the upper and lower class. The upper class holds the wealth, respect, and prestige of a community, while the lower class lives in poverty and harsh judgement from the rest of society. Often times this divide can even
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Gwendolyn Brooks addresses these social issues in her poem, “Lovers of the Poor.” The poem was inspired by a time when a group of white judgemental women barged into her apartment, unannounced so they could …show more content…
Brooks uses her experience to write a poem that really expands the reader's social awareness. Throughout the poem, “Lovers of the Poor,” by Gwendolyn Brooks, the speaker uses a sarcastic, skeptical tone, and sensual imagery to convey that wealthy women who step into the lower class to perform an act of “charity” behave entitled and privileged.
In the beginning of the poem, the author uses irony and metaphors to describe the behaviors which the rich condemn. Opening with the introduction of the Ladies Betterment League, Brooks sets the irony for the poem. This “league,” a fake organization created by the author, has the goal of giving money to the poor. Brooks goes on to offer insight into the women's thoughts. She describes, “Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting”(4). Irony is important in these lines as it illustrates and foreshadows how the women contradict themselves throughout the entire poem. The reader sees the irony in how their faces display “mercy and “murder,” meaning they have pity for people of the lower class, but they don't have any real empathy for them. Nonetheless, they project a feeling of gracefulness for
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