In the poem “The Bean Eaters”, Gwendolyn Brooks illustrates the image of a simple elderly couple, whose life has become rather mundane and routine. The first two stanzas of the poem serve as an exposition of the story, as Brooks paints a portrait of a poor, aging couple living an extremely routine life. However, in the third and final stanza, Brooks challenges the connotations that arise from the preceding stanzas. With a change in tone, Brooks transforms the entire subject of the poem into a more romantic and sentimental story. Through careful word choice, structure, and a shift in the overall mood of the poem, Gwendolyn Brooks tells a story about finding happiness through simplicity and timeless love, while challenging the prejudices of society on poverty and simple living. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay The opening stanza of the poem is essentially a description of what dinner is like for the couple. Echoing the title, Brooks describes that the couple "[eat] mostly beans," on "simple shavings on a plain, creaky wooden table" (Brooks 1, 3). With a very simple choice of words, Brooks immediately introduces the reader to the type of lifestyle the couple leads. By choosing beans as food for the couple, Brooks emphasizes how fundamental their lives are. Additionally, through the repetition of the word “plain” in the first stanza, Brooks again emphasizes the essence of their daily lives. The first stanza is also structured very evenly, as the four lines alternate between long and short – the first and third lines both contain eight words, and the second and fourth contain four and two words, respectively. In doing so, Brooks further emphasizes the coherence of the couple's life. Brooks conveys the theme of uniformity in the first stanza through a rhythmically uniform structure. As in the previous stanza, Brooks continues to explain who the couple is to the reader in stanza 2. Describing the couple as "pretty good", Brooks emphasizes the couple's simplicity, stating that they are essentially average people (5). Brooks again emphasizes their normality in the next line, as she simply states that they "lived their day" (6). This shows the reader that not only is the couple getting older, but they have completely settled down. Brooks also describes the routine of the couple's life in lines 7 and 8, saying that they "keep putting on their clothes/and putting their things away." By including this, Brooks gives the reader additional insight into the couple's mundane lives. Additionally, like the first stanza, Brooks uses a consistent structure to reflect the context of the stanza. The lines are very similar in length, as lines 1, 2, and 4 have six syllables and line 3 has eight. Brooks again emphasizes the daily uniformity of the couple's lives, allowing the reader to assess who the subjects really are. In the third and final stanza, Brooks changes the mood of the poem and thus illustrates the actual theme. Before the third stanza, the reader gets the idea that this couple lives in poverty, which naturally denotes a depressing and lonely mood. The couple is painted in a very different light in the third stanza, which gives a completely different perspective on the poem as a whole. Brooks begins the stanza with “And Remembering…”, which immediately slows the pace and thus changes the mood of the poem (9). She continues the transition with line 10, where she describes the couple continuing to remember, emphasizing a sort of dreamlike state.