18 pages • 36 minutes read
Amanda GormanThe Miracle of Morning
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Morning
Much like spring, morning symbolizes a fresh start and a hopeful feeling compared to what has come before. Gorman characterizes the morning with awakening, brightness, and burgeoning warmth. In this poem, morning is a miracle, meaning it is something spiritual that exists thanks to faith.
Gorman is purposeful at the beginning of the poem to open with the play on the words mourning/morning to show how the actual morning has power over the darkness of night. The morning drives out the clouds and the cold and brings life, humanity, and community. She returns to the image of morning in the fourth stanza when she again puns on mourning/morning. This time, the significance of the morning is the light it brings, and the metaphor here is that the people embody the light of the morning.
The final mention of morning comes in the final stanza where the morning now represents the passing of days. Each day is another step away from darkness and closer to brighter days. This poem uses morning to mean three things: a symbol of the hope that drives out darkness, a representation of the people who bring light to the world, and the passing of time from grief to strength.
Heroes
The heroes of this poem are the heroes of the pandemic, who are heroic for carrying on with their normal roles and responsibilities during an extraordinary time. During the pandemic, ordinary people became societal heroes for doing this, and Gorman recognizes this phenomenon. Much like her poem “Chorus of the Captains” that she dedicated to regular heroes like military members and healthcare workers, “The Miracle of Morning” names its heroes early in the work. The fifth stanza lists the people and professions of the pandemic that society immediately held in high regard.
Later in the poem, Gorman references ordinary activities that she views as essential for maintaining one’s appreciation for humanity, including reading children’s books and dancing to music. These simple acts are heroic for Gorman because they represent what it is to be human, and in the world of this poem, being human is next to divine.
Light
Similar to Gorman’s use of morning to suggest progress, hope, and unity, she uses the image of light to play a similar role in the poem. The poem opens with golden light to exemplify the strength of the morning, and thus, the strength of optimism and belief in new beginnings.
The strongest mention of light appears in stanza four when Gorman compares people to light. Her simile represents the thematic material in the poem, communicating its central message to the reader: No matter how awful things get, society will not break. It is impossible to break light, so using it as a metaphor for the society she celebrates is apt.
Related Titles
By Amanda Gorman
