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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 4 page exposition of this poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. "To An Old Black Woman, Homeless and Indistinct" is a homage to a life of promise, beauty and talent that has been wasted and discarded by society, like a piece of rubbish. The juxtaposition of the very rich against the very poor suggests the class-based nature of society and the inequities, the heartbreaking injustice of such a system. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khbrow.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
has been wasted and discarded by society, like a piece of rubbish. The juxtaposition of the very rich against the very poor suggests the class-based nature of society and the
inequities, the heartbreaking injustice of such a system. The poem begins with Brooks describing the "blue hubbub of the womans life (line 2) and how each day is a
"pilgrimage" (line 1). The old black womans pilgrimage, her daily journey, is one of survival. By using the word "bacchanal," Brooks suggests through implication that the woman copes with alcoholism,
but her life is hardly one of revelry, which is another connotation that this word invokes, as her "bacchanal" is one "fear and self-troubling" (line 3). While her days are
horrendous, a struggle for survival, her nights are worse, as these entail enduring the night in an "alley or cardboard viaduct," accompanied "rats," who find her "secret places" (line 6).
In the second section of the poem, Brooks again addresses the womans days and how she confronts the street, her "incessant enemy" line 8). She walks and walks and
passes people, but then Brooks corrects herself and says "No. The people pass you" (line 12). This suggests that the passing crowd, "The People" (line 11), pass the old woman
as if she did not exist. They tune her out, just as they do other unsightly aspects of urban living. No one sees the cigarette butts on the sidewalk, the
trash left in the gutter. No one truly sees an old woman who is about to die from hardship and exposure. They look away. The "People," that is, the personification
of society at-large, are concerned with their lives, their jobs, their destinations and not with a woman who is in dire need of any sort of helping hand. Brooks
...