Motherly Love Anonymous College

A child can feel lost and alone without motherly love. Marian Anderson’s “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane each detail isolation in light of separation from a mother. Anderson’s timbre, tone, loudness, tempo, and the song’s lack of grand instrumentation help the listener understand the speaker’s isolation. However, instead of being literal, the lyrics only compare the narrator’s emotional state to that of a motherless child. On the other hand, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets involves the reader in Maggie’s actual motherlessness through point of view, imagery, and the unloving setting she finds herself in. Crane’s story is more tragic than the song because he forces the audience to suffer through Maggie’s genuine isolation from her mother instead of listening to a merely figurative account of that emotion.

The song begins with a strong, prominent piano that quiets down as Anderson’s vocals make a commanding entrance. At the instant she begins to sing, the listener is made aware that the speaker is mature due to Anderson’s deep and husky tone, just as a child must be mature and strong while navigating the world without a mother. Anderson cries, “Sometimes I feel like a...