Claims Review

Claims by Judith Ortiz Cofer Review

In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s poem, “Claims”, literary elements such as tone and imagery are used to explain the protagonist’s grandmother’s want and need for freedom. The individual in Judith Ortiz Cofer’s poem is describing the way the person’s grandmother is “claiming back her territory” (l.18), gaining her freedom and moving on after all of life’s experiences. The grandmother has first been given the image of “a Bedouin tent” (l. 2) which is a type of tent in the desert full of seams, wear and old age. From what the content of the poem is wanting the readers to imagine, the grandmother has been through a lot and is deserves her independence & freedom of worries that arose in the earlier years of being a woman. Her body appears to show much aging in conclusion but comes around to a successful outcome for herself in the long run.

She spent the majority of her life being a grandmother, a mother as well as a wife, and is wanting to “claim back her territory” (l. 18) (body and mind) and move on with her life. This is the use of imagery to get the readers to imagine in a different sense how the grandmother is finally feeling the urge to go on her own way and lead the life she wants after all the troubles she experienced in her earlier years.

Her quote which appears to be coming from the grandmother, “Children are made in the night and steal your days for the rest of your life…” (l. 13-15) shows there is great responsibility in having children but is a duty to raise them. The grandmother tells this to only her daughters and as a prayer. The role of society places on her that she has passed to her girls is that the women tend to become primary caregivers. The setting of this poem is and was written in 1987, in which this was a time in society that led women to become the primary caregiver and provider

The grandmother’s response in Cofer’s literature piece “Claims” is quite typical and in no way unusual. She had been on the Earth for so many years and took on such tremendous responsibilities like creating and raising her children as well as experiencing grief of miscarriage more than once described as “shipwrecked babies drowned in her black waters” (l. 11-12)

This quote taken from Cofer’s poem is a very deep statement that hits straight to home so to say. The comparison between miscarried life and young shipwrecked individuals in the ocean’s black pit has a slight morbid twist but deep connection with loss. The quote is definitely the one part of the poem that stands out more than the rest, even more than the prayer the grandmother recited to her daughters typed in italics in the literature book in which this piece was read from to do this paper. The choice of words for this does not blend with the rest of the poem and is possible to be made to be looked at and remembered more than the rest of this

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