This piece was very effective in illustrating a character with very little blatant descriptions. Other than the line "She is a beautiful, unlucky woman" (Emanuel) we discover what the mother is like through her past actions and current situation. I took note of this piece the most because I was pleased with how minimal a piece could be to fully give a sense of character. I am accustomed to long paragraphs, or even novels, to expound upon a character and often forget that a twenty-nine line poem can be just as effective in creating a unique perspective of a character, possibly independent of the character's actions.
The narrator here describes their mother as a tragic beauty, and that is what shapes our view of her, but they do not leave out the various ill-conceived decisions she has made. While we still see very clearly her alcohol abuse and tendency towards self-harm, the mother is romanticized somehow in the way her child remembers her, giving us two possibly conflicting views of her: that of the suicidal drunk, and that of the mistreated young girl.
This is an astute observation, about the two conflicting views of the character that are drawn in just those few details.
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