In the poem “The Bean Eaters”, Gwendolyn Brooks illustrates the image of a simple elderly couple, whose lives have become rather mundane and routine. The first two stanzas of the poem serve as an exposition of the story, as Brooks paints a picture of an elderly, poor couple living an extremely routine life. In the third and final stanza, however, Brooks challenges the connotations that arise from the previous stanzas. With a change in tone, Brooks turns the entire topic of the poem into a more romantic and sentimental story. Through careful word choice, structure, and a change in the overall mood of the poem, Gwendolyn Brooks conveys a story about the pursuit of happiness through simplicity and timeless love, while challenging the prejudices society has about poverty and about the simple life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't 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 the couple “[eating] mostly beans,” on a “plain chip table 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 is leading. By choosing beans as food for the couple, Brooks emphasizes how vital they are to their lives. Furthermore, through the repetition of the word “simple” in the first stanza, Brooks again emphasizes the essence of their daily lives. The first stanza is also very uniformly structured, as the four lines alternate between being long and short: the first and third lines are both eight words, and the second and fourth are four and two words respectively. In this way, Brooks further emphasizes the coherence of the couple's life. Brooks conveys the theme of uniformity in the first verse 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 "Mostly good," Brooks emphasizes the simplicity of the couple, saying that they are essentially average people (5). Brooks again emphasizes their normality in the next line, simply stating that they have “lived their day” (6). This communicates to the reader that not only is the couple getting older, but that they have completely calmed down. Brooks also describes the routine of the couple's life in lines 7 and 8, saying that they "keep putting their clothes on / And putting their things away." By including this, Brooks gives the reader additional insight into the couple's high life. Also, 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 once again emphasizes the everyday identity of the couple's lives, allowing the reader to evaluate who the subjects truly are. In the third and final stanza, Brooks changes the mood of the poem, thus illustrating the actual theme. Before the third stanza, the reader is given the idea that this couple lives in poverty, which naturally connotes a depressing and lonely state of mind. The couple is painted in a very different light in the third stanza, which results in a completely different perspective of 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). He continues the transition with line 10, where he describes the couple continuing to remember, underlining a sort of dreamlike state through words.