Morgan Stanifer
English 2673
February 7, 2011

“Those who wanted and never received; who were born without hands, who had and lost; the Turkish mother after the earthquake with the five silent children lined before her”
I chose this passage from the poem Mother of Nothing by Naomi Shihab Nye. I believe that this passage is talking about a particular woman or just women in general who have had to deal with the pain of losing a child, not being able to have a child and women who have had children and are not as motherly as some. When I read this passage the thing that stood out to me was the realization and the ability to relate to women. In this passage Naomi Shihab Nye says “ the Turkish mother after the earthquake with the five silent children lined before her”, this line stands out to me as being metaphoric because I can see the children laying on the ground dead in front of her without her having to literally say what she saw. Her choice of words such as silent for dead and lined before instead of lying down really sets an image in my head as to what the exact situation could have looked like. I can also see the same phrase meaning the mother could think of the children as “silent” not because they were literally quiet, but because she simply does not know how to relate to them. The reason why she cannot relate to these children is because she feels lost in the world of motherhood. The phrase “who were born without hands” means to me that there are some women who are born without motherly traits and are unable to nurture children as well as others. I also got a sense of pain that is shared between the three different types of mothers. The title Mother of Nothing I think can also relate to the passage because for the mothers who have lost a child can feel as if they do not have anyone to be a mother too anymore and those mothers who have children but do not know how to be a mom can feel like a mother to nothing because they do not know what they are doing. The reason I chose this passage out of the entire poem was because I fell that it reveals the true theme of the poem as a whole and would intrigue someone to read more. I feel that this passage does a good job of summing up the poem and gives us a reason for the title.