. The mother also shows the characteristic of fright when she knows something happened to her child, and sadness when she finds her daughter’s shoe and doesn’t see her anywhere. Then there would be the characteristic of honor and independence when the child wants to march for freedom and wants to be with her friends so she can be seen as a person and not a mother’s child. But when looking at it from another point of view, one might see that the author is trying to tell an intricate story using few words. Dudley Randall tells a wonderful story of a mother’s love for her child, a child’s need to be a part of a struggle for independence, the sacrifice of not wanting her child to march the streets out of fear, and allowing her to go to the church to sing in the children’s choir, and the sadness and strife the mother went through when she realized her daughter was gone. Lastly, a poet will usually use some types of poetic devices to enhance the quality of the poem; such as similes and metaphors. Randall doesn’t use many of these things but he does use personification once in a while; for example when he said “she clawed through the bits of glass and brick”. He also uses hyperbole, which is an exaggeration, when he says “she bathed until she was rose petal sweet”.In sum, this poem is excellent in its storytelling and I would recommend this to anyone. ...
