There are three works of poetry to be analyzed and compared. They are: Refugee Mother and Child by Chinua Achebe, Remember by Christina Rosetti, Crabbit Old Woman by Phyllis McCormack.
All three poems have death as their theme but the focus of death is different in each one and meant for different audiences.
Chinua Achebe’s work is the most moving as it gives the most vivid picture of death that will come.
The Refugee Mother and Child begins with a four-sentence stanza that acts as an introduction to the larger second stanza. The second stanza tells a story longer than the words alone can. It builds a picture in the reader’s mind of the woman holding the child while gently touching his hair. The “ghosts” are the last remnants of caring and pride that remain with the woman. The poem ends with a simile and has the readers wondering what life would be like for this child had he been born someplace else in the world. The poem “Remember” follows a rhyming pattern that stays the same every four lines.
That pattern follows an ABBA pattern with the first and fourth line rhyming and the second and third lines with the rhyming of the last words. Rosetti’s 14 lines sum up what those left behind after her death will do and what they will no longer be able to do. The poem Crabbit Old Woman follows a similar rhyming pattern as the poem “Remember”. This poem was also written using four lines for each stanza and an AABB rhyming pattern using the last word of each line. There is a major exception where one stanza in the poem is 16 lines long. In this part, the poet expresses her life experiences. She recalls her past at certain times (“I’m a small child of ten…”). It seems that the writer wants the nurses caring for her to remember that she is a person with a past, wants, and needs rather than a patient.
The poem itself is directed to primary care nurses whose daily tasks include caring for this woman’s basic needs.
All three poems have separate authors. Chinua Achebe is a native African from Nigeria and has seen poverty and hunger first hand as well as other challenges of African society. He has also been educated in Nigeria and abroad so has seen the differences between African society and Western society. “Christina Georgina Rossetti, the daughter of the Tractarian Movement who, as a devotional poet, ‘has not her equal in the English language,’ says Sir Edmund Gosse in his History of English Literature, was born on December 5, 1830, at 38, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, the youngest of a family of four gifted children.” (Project Canterbury, 1933). Phyllis McCormack (Crabbit Old Woman) is said to be the author from Dundee, Ireland. There is also a response to this work by an unknown author. Its title is “Nurses Response to Crabbit Old Woman”. Death is a common theme in all three writings. Rosetti’s 14 lines sum up what those left behind after her death will do and what they will no longer be able to do. Achebe’s poem addresses death as very near and real. This is a death that will happen but doesn’t have to happen. Rossetti’s poem is almost instructional to the reader as it tells how the person should feel after the subject’s death and points out what the reader will no longer be able to do (“it will be late to counsel then or pray”).
Crabbit Old Women asks her caregivers to remember that she, despite her old age, wishes her caregivers to respect her humanity. She is more than a patient but a living, breathing person.
Each poem speaks to a different audience.
Refugee Mother and Child is written from an observer’s point of view. The condition of the children in this poem (or description) is as starving.
The author describes them as having “blown empty bellies” which is an outward sign of the starvation they are enduring. Despite the child’s condition, the mother continues to care for him. In Rossetti’s poem, the writer directs his words toward someone who will outlive the speaker.
It may be written from the point of view of an elderly person. It is instructional. One can assume by the poem that the speaker is near death or knows his/her time is almost up and he/she is going to the “silent land”. Crabbit Old Woman is written from the point of view of a person in a nursing home or old age home. The old woman wants those around her to remember that she is a person with years of good memories and experiences rather than just an elderly woman awaiting death. The most moving portion of this poem is when the old woman recalls being bathed, dressed, and fed according to someone else’s schedule. She wants her caretakers to “open your eyes”. She wants the nurses to look at her for who she is.
The most moving portion of this poem is when the old woman recalls being bathed, dressed, and fed according to someone else’s schedule. She wants her caretakers to “open your eyes”. She wants the nurses to look at her for who she is.
Metaphors are used in all three works. In Refugee Mother and Child the mother’s actions are “like putting flowers on the tiny grave”. The coming death is so close and the mother of the child understands it. That is why her actions are named with the help of such a metaphor. She feels that death will soon come and enjoys the last moments of her being with her lovely child. Rossetti’s poem speaks of grieving as “darkness and corruption”. In these lines, the author tried to express the feelings that everyone has when grieving comes to him or her. Everyone sees nothing but darkness and feels nothing but the corruption of the world around him or her and of life as it is. In the Crabbit Old Woman, the author likens the time after her husband’s death as the “Hard days are upon me”. These lines are created by the author to express the feelings of a woman who loved her husband and relied upon him in all respects. After his death, a woman that was dependent on him in material and spiritual senses were left alone in the world with the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. Hard days came to her and she felt as if they were put by some divine hand upon her.
All the poems are full of abstracts that only can be understood intellectually and represent other poetic devices used by the authors of the contrasting poems. “There is a stone where I once had a heart” (Crabbit Old Woman). This device can be interpreted dually – from one side it is a metonymy, from another one it is a literary comparison. If we consider it as a metonymy, then it symbolizes the changes that happen to people when the persons they loved die and there is nothing and nobody else in the world that they would ever love. In case, if we take it as a comparison, the meaning of it will be to express that the soul of a person becomes hard and hostile to feelings when a strong feeling is ended by something that can not be fought – death. The soul and heart of a person are compared to the hard stone that can not feel or love but is also unable to feel the pain of loss. “Singing in her eyes” (Refugee Mother and Child”) is another metonymy that demonstrates th4e feeling of gladness in the yes of the mother who had a child and knew that she could spend at least some last moments with it. This feeling was not only seen in her eyes, but it could almost be heard, and it was so strong that it seemed that it could be heard when it was singing in her eyes. “It will be late to counsel then or pray” (Remember) is the metaphor that is used to express the inevitability of death and the results of it that can never be corrected or turned back. The main character of the poem understands that when death comes no one can fight it, and there is no use in asking for advice or help from the divine forces, as far as death is the divine will as well.
Works Cited
Project Canterbury. (1933) Christina Georgina Rossetti. London: Catholic Literature Association, 1933.