[Client’s Name]
[Client’s Professor]
[Client’s Subject]
[Date Passed]
In the poem, we are confronted with the question of the moral obligation of a child to his or her parent. To understand this, we must first understand the relationship between the mother and the child. Let us first analyze the personality of the mother, the Chippewa woman that the poet had reiterated.
Right from the start, it was clear that the mother was alone and had no one to depend on but herself. “Far from the Fort and far from the hunters, a Chippewa woman with her sick baby, crouched in the last hours of a great storm.” However, the next few lines – “Valiant, unshaken, she took of her own flesh, baited the fish-hook, drew in a gray-trout, drew in his fellows, heaped them beside her, dead in the snow” – showed the strength of the Chippewa woman and the lengths of which she was willing to do to survive. Not many would be able to cut their own flesh to do use it as flesh. If she was a weaker woman, she would have cried and given up. If we continue to read further, it will become clear where she was drawing her strength from. “Valiant, unshaken, she faced the long distance, wolf-haunted and lonely, sure of her goal and the life of her dear one.” Her determination came from her resolve to keep her baby alive. She would not rest until she is sure that her son is safe.
Now what happens next is that the woman gets abandoned by her son. “Launched their canoes and slunk away through the islands, Left her alone forever, Without a word of farewell, Because she was old and useless.” This brings us to ponder whether or not it was morally right for the son to abandon his mother. Utilitarians would argue that the son was thinking of the benefit of his children and possibly his wife (although it was not explicitly mentioned whether he still had a wife). “Years and years after, when she was old and withered, when her son was an old man and his children filled with vigour” Because of her old age, the Chippewa woman may not be able to keep up with the rest of the family and may turn to be a burden. In this sense, he would be morally right. On the other hand, let us consider the fact that long ago, even though his mother was suffering, she kept him safe. “While the young chieftain tugged at her breasts, or slept in the lacings of the warm tikanagan.”
In the end, The Forsaken shows us that across cultures, abandonment of the elderly really does happen. The poem only made use of literary techniques to perhaps make it more dramatic but the heart of The Forsaken only serves to remind us that this particular question of morality is ever present but whether or not it is morally right or if it could be justified depends on the values of whoever is talking.
