The Courage That My Mother Had
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by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Answer the following questions completely.
1. Who is speaking? (1)
2. Find the simile in line 11. List the two things compared. (2)
3. What did the mother give the speaker before she died?
3. What does the speaker wish she had of her mother’s instead of it? (1)
4. Why does the speaker compare her mother to a New England granite? (1)
5. Consider the previous three questions and answers. What do we learn about morals and
values of the speaker based on those answer?
6. Define irony: (1)
7. What is the irony in the poem? Hint: focus on what the daughter didn’t get from the mom
before the mother died. (2)
8. Chart the rhyme scheme in the poem. (12)
stanza 1
stanza 2
stanza 3
Word Study
9. Words have a range of meaning. For each word, first write the meaning it has in the
poem, then write 2 other meaning it can have. Try not to use the dictionary. Think first,
then use the dictionary if necessary. (15)
word
still
rock
treasure
spare
grave
meaning in the poem
other mean
other meaning