Summary and Analysis of My Mother Never Worked

MY MOTHER NEVER WORKED

Bonnie Smith - Yackel

SYNOPSIS 

In the essay “My Mother Never Worked,” Bonnie Smith-Yackel recollects the time when she called Social Security to claim her mother’s death benefits. Social Security places Smith-Yackel on hold so they can check their records on her mother, Martha Jerabek Smith. While waiting, she remembers the many things her mother did, and the compassion her mother felt towards her husband and children. When Social Security returns to the phone, they tell Smith-Yackel that she could not receive her mother’s death benefits because her mother never had a wage-earning job.

A tremendous amount of irony is used in this essay. The title, in itself, is full of irony; it makes readers curious about the essay’s point and how the author feels about the situation. Smith-Yackel uses the essay to convey her opinion of work. Her thesis is not directly stated; however, she uses detail upon detail to prove her mother did work, just not in the eyes of the government. Although her mother never was employed at a public or private business, she worked at home relentlessly. During the day, she worked on the farm, cooked for her family, and cleaned the house; at night, she sewed rugs and clothes for her children. Martha Smith continued to sew and plant a garden in her old age as well as when her children were grown and on their own. The passing of time was revealed in the years Smith-Yackel’s siblings were born. They were also revealed in the passing of seasons for farming.

SUMMARY

This narration begins with a phone call, a phone call many people make after the death to a family member - the call to Social Security. As the narrator to this essay goes on hold she thinks about her mother’s life, starting from the time she graduated high school - she worked. Her first job was at the general store which she managed and worked full time after she became a farmer’s wife. This was where the real work began: cleaning, milking, growing, weeding, canning, sewing, knitting, quilting, raising eight children and the list goes on and on. 

Later in her mother’s life, she was in a car accident, that resulted in becoming paralysed from the waist down, spending the rest of her days in a wheelchair. From this wheelchair, she continued working: canning, baking, ironing, sewing, and writing letters weekly. When the author finally gets reconnected the Social Security Worker, he has the audacity (fearless daring) to say to tell Bonnie that “He’s sorry, but her mother gets nothing because she never worked.”

  

REFERENCES

UKEssays. (November 2018). My Mother Never Worked. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/my-mother-never-worked.php?vref=1