Compare and Contrastn Essay

Happiness Lives

Born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks is considered “a real poet” by the New York Times (Watkins 2). Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Brooks falls victim to racism, poverty, and a hellish society. Throughout the dreadful ordeal, Brooks remains optimistic about the circumstances and uses them to her advantage. The Chicago native uses her social background and literary talent to capture the attention of her reader through dynamic poetry. Brooks expresses her sincere passion for writing as she states her inspiration. “I wrote about what I saw and heard in the street”. “I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first on one side and then the other. There was my material (Watkins 1). Brooks’ poetry initially communicates compassion, social consciousness, and a deep spiritual meaning. After observing the Second Black Writers’ Conference at Fisk University, Brooks realizes the belligerent new generation and veers her poetic spotlight on the African American people and their advancement (Ariel 1, 2). “Sadie and Maud” and “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks are powerful poems that speak of life-altering decisions and their unfortunate consequences. In these two poems, Brooks uses diction, syntax, rhyme, and different points of views in similar yet different ways to teach the reader just how relevant happiness is to life and how making poor life decisions will ultimately lead to a quick demise but may also yield happiness.

The diction Brooks uses in the poems create a realistic atmosphere for the reader. The vivid adjectives and verbs such as “livingest” and “lurk” allow the reader to fully absorb the text and imagine the events as they take place. The narrator tells the reader, “We Real Cool”. “We left school” (lines 1-2). From these two lines the reader automatically senses the high level of confidence the speakers have and is lead to believe that the narrators are completely satisfied with their deviant behaviors, although they are wrong. As for “Sadie and Maud”, the diction Brooks uses towards Maud in this piece suggest the complete opposite of that in “We Real Cool”. Brooks describes Maud as “a thin brown mouse who lives alone in an old house (lines 18-20). This statement not only paints a picture of a skinny depressed woman who goes to college only to end up living in an old house, but it reveals that Maud makes all the right choices acceptable to society and still ends up unhappy. Brooks also uses symbolism to show how Sadie lives her life. “The fine toothed comb” symbolizes how Sadie explores every aspect of life with no regrets and no worries about how the outside world views her.

“Sadie and Maud” and “We Real Cool” both share important messages about how to live life and what certain actions will lead to. Although both poems communicate a similar message, Brooks approaches each poem in a different way. The syntax in “We Real Cool” stands out as Brooks uses “we” at the end of each phrase. This awkward word order is put in place to introduce the reader to the personalities of the nonchalant and uneducated narrators. The absence of the word “we” after the last line of the poem is quite significant because it summarizes the main point Brooks tries to convey to the reader. She wants her reader to know if one chooses to live life recklessly, the consequences may constitute happiness, but death will soon follow. Instead of using an awkward syntax in “Sadie and Maud” to communicate the aftermath of making bad decisions, Brooks structures the poem into quatrains to focus the reader’s attention on the primary message of the poem. By writing the poem in quatrains, the reader is able to understand the minor idea of each four line stanza then later join them to form the central idea Brooks tries to communicate. In essence, she wants the reader to understand that rebelling against society does not necessarily constitute happiness, but deciding how to live a pleasing life may cause one to go astray from what society views as moral.

An obvious difference in “Sadie and Maud” and “We Real Cool” is the different types of narrators in each of the poems. Brooks writes “We Real Cool” from a first person point of view, and this distinction is very important. As an author, Brooks knows that often times the reader tends to trust a first person narrator, and this is exactly what she wants to occur. Brooks wants the audience to know exactly what the characters actions are and what happens to them as a result of their behavior. She does not want the reader to make any assumptions, aside from the obvious, about the