Graduation By Maya Angelou Summary

Americans in the 1940’s valued education in a different way than they do today. Americans of that era considered graduating from the eighth-grade the completion of public schooling for many. In her memoir “Graduation Day,” Maya Angelou describes the events and excitement leading up to and including her eighth-grade graduation ceremony. The events that take place at her graduation transform Angelou’s views of her education in a profound manner. The value Angelou places on her education increases throughout the events of her graduation.

Throughout life we go through many stepping stones, Maya Angelou's autobiographical essay "Graduation", was about more than just moving on to another grade. The unexpected events that occurred during the ceremony enabled her to graduate from the views of a child to the more experienced and sometimes disenchanting views of an adult. Upon reading the story there is an initial feeling of excitement and hope which was quickly tarnished with the abrupt awareness of human prejudices. The author vividly illustrates a rainbow of significant mood changes she undergoes throughout the story.

In an excerpt from her novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings called “Graduation,” Maya Angelou narrates the anticipation surrounding graduation in her small town of Stamps, Alabama. Angelou effectively contrives noteworthy differences between paragraphs 1 through 5 and 6 through 10 through the use of emotional and descriptive diction, powerfully bold comparisons, and a shift in perspective in order to instill pride and dignity in Angelou and her race despite the era’s highlighted social injustices which she endures.

Throughout her life, Maya Angelou was ridiculed for the color of her skin and was treated differently because of it. So many racist people lived in her town and used her and the black community as a doormat. African Americans were restricted to certain things and, “did not have the same rights and privileges as whites” (Agins 8). Racism was a big problem in Maya Angelou’s childhood, especially when she was eight. When Angelou was eight she helped her grandmother run the main store in Stamps. Momma rented out the house on the lot of her store to a poor white family. The girls would come by the store and demand things from Momma and Maya and would have to be addressed as “Miz”. One day when they went to walk up the steps they saw Momma standing on the porch with arms crossed and slippers on and started imitating her. Maya was infuriated and wanted to hurt the girls but Momma taught Maya to let it roll off her back, seeing as though racism would be a continuous thing throughout her life (Angelou 29-32). Maya felt that, “Being a product (is ‘victim’ a better word?) of southern Negro upbringing, I decided that I ‘would understand it all better by-and-by’” (Angelou 276). Angelou found it easier to be brought up through a segregated area where she was taunted and walked all over just for being black daily rather than finding it out later in life.

“Graduation Day” illustrates Maya Angelou’s experience on her graduation day. All of Angelou’s feelings, reasoning, and thoughts of her graduation day are depicted between the pages of her short story. Her text covers multiple different aspects of a segregated community’s lifestyle and explains their decisions on coping with their limitations. The power of words impacts the community in several ways during Angelou’s story. Because words impact and shape people, they influence individuals into themselves.

Women’s beauty has been one of the favorite subjects of many literary works. Many genius authors have admired women’s physical beauty according to their imaginations. However, their literary works, the male dominated society and the female community have also served as accomplices in creating notion about the beauty of women. In our society, it is believed that a woman should have fair-skin, hourglass figure and long hair to attain the title of ‘a beautiful woman’. This notion has degraded the stature of the entire female community instead of elevating it. The revolutionary poet, Maya Angelou, tried to break this notion by writing a poem to give tribute to ‘an average-looking woman’ who can become trendsetter and leader in her field of interest despite of not having fair-skin and the hourglass figure. In the poem “Phenomenal Woman”, the author urges women to ‘be proud of them and their gender’ and to celebrate the womanhood instead of being ashamed of it.

In Maya Angelou’s chapter “Graduation” from her autobiography I Know Where the Caged Bird Sings captivating symbols and literary devices enforce the words of the chapter to spring to life. For starters, several symbols complete the ideas of the innocence of hope and unity tied into the chapter. Additionally, multiple literary devices portray the disadvantages of injustice and segregation. African Americans experience the unity and the innocence of hope their race has to offer through variations of symbols and figurative language. The Negro National Anthem symbolizes unity to show the graduating African American class stands as one.

Maya Angelou uses background information to manipulate the reader’s emotions. She does this first by telling the story in chronological order. Once the order is established, the reader starts to understand where Angelou is coming from. The other way that she manipulates emotions is by slowly changing the tone throughout the novel. When these factors are put together, they are meant to create sympathy from the reader. A sense of sadness that the black community faced during the 1940’s.

As I read Maya Angelou’s “Graduation” I smiled, and said to myself “It takes a certain few to overcome such hardships”. The Narrative talks about a graduating class in the 1940’s where blacks and whites were separated. Maya Angelou, the main character gives the readers a sharp, clear perspective of black high school graduates at that time. The Author does an outstanding job at making the readers feel emotionally connected; by using similes, metaphors, personification. One would immediately notice while reading the narrative that there are many different stereo types. For example when Mr. Edward Donleavy gives a speech about the improvement of local schools, he mentions that there are several great athlete’s graduating from Maya’s school. Mr.

Afterwards Maya writes, “I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was as clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their roles (5.22).” It is in this moment that Maya realizes that she cannot stick up for herself or her loved ones and her worst fear comes true: she is just another black person in the South. The loss of identity is a prime example of dehumanization. Angelou is making a clear statement about the human condition, the oppressed are not the bad people and that a person is a person no matter the color of their skin. Now, the audience can see the frustration of the oppressed and understand how unfair it really is for the black population. Maya Angelou’s style of writing is comparable to a storyteller, details are rarely omitted and at times the writing is very unbiased. If she is trying to prove a point, she makes a statement like the one above. Later on in the novel, Maya needs to see a dentist for a severe tooth problem; however, the white

Maya Angelou grew up in a small, segregated town in the deep South where she had to learn to deal with racial hatred. Angelou was originally born as Marguerite Johnson in Saint Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. When Angelou was three and her older brother, Bailey, was four, her parents sent them off to live with their father’s mother in the rural town of Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou’s parents were never truly happy around one another. So, her father “decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and [he]shipped Maya and Bailey home to his mother” (Angelou 6) Angelou does not remember most of her trip, but once they reached the deep South, things started to look up. “Negro passengers, who always traveled with loaded lunch boxes, felt sorry for ‘the poor little motherless darlings’ and plied Maya and her brother with cold fried chicken and potato salad” (Angelou 6). Throughout all of her work, Angelou

She speaks not only for herself but also for her gender and race. “This extension of self occurs in Angelou’s autobiographies and protest poetry. It is in keeping with a traditional practice of black writers to personalize their common racial experiences” (McGeagh 28). The ‘I” of Angelou’s refrain is obviously female and, in this instance, a woman forthright about the sexual nuances of personal and social struggle. Maya Angelou has been very involved with the civil rights movement. In her poems she really captures an incredible sense of momentum, vitality, and hope. She states that these experiences are “so important for me in my life that it must come through in my work” (McGeagh 5). Her writing attempts to capture and preserve the determining forces, vicissitudes, and ambiance of her own life story and of the ongoing African-American story, which helped to shape her and which she reflects and illuminates. “Abandoned by both her parents when they divorced, Angelou early experienced the twin forces that would determine the contour of her life and the nature of her career: personal rejection and institutional racism” (McGeagh

Maya Angelou chose to share her experience as if she is having a conversation with her audience. Her choice of words lets her audience know that she has moved on and her past no longer has a hold on her. Both women persuade their readers to have hope no matter how dark they may think a

Someone once said ¨ A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success¨ This quote is saying, one can not give up on the goals one sets, every little effort to push forward is on step closer to success. If oneś hard work fails, do not give up. Keep trying until perfection is reached. A concept that is commonly found in literature is hope. Often times the overall piece revolves around hope. Hope is something that makes one want to succeed, and inspires one to not let obstacles overcome a person's goals. The dictionary defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen “. Common synonyms for Hope include ¨ambition” “goal” “faith” The opposite of Hope is “hopelessness” “distrust” “fear”. If one does not have the mindset to to fight and beat their battle then, one will never have the mindset to overcome any challenge. The importance of hope is to have faith in God and trust him with one´s goals. When God assigns a task for one to do, he guides on through all the struggles and encourage one to keep pushing even though one is lost. Maya Angelou connects to the theme hope because, though she let her fears get a hold of her, she still managed to find the strength to overcome them, and continue inspiring people with her voice. Maya Angelou was a strong poet writer, but one day she was raped, and she told her brother, in fury her brother did not respond to the situation very well he killed the man. The next day she learned that the man had died. Maya was so convinced that her words had killed him she stopped speaking. Temple Grandin connects to the theme hope so well. Temple was a girl who had autism and she had so many obstacles tried to stop her from exceding in things that everyone thought she could not accomplish. But Temple pushed through and fought for what she wanted. Temple was diagnosed with autism when she was a little girl. The doctors didn't quite know the struggles that came with autism. The doctors told Temples mom that Temple would never learn to do anything on her own. Temples mom was an encouraging person, she never let anyones words bring her goals as a mother , to make sure they accomplish big things in

To value means to hold a valued entity in special esteem and consider it important. In “Graduation Day,” Maya Angelou recounts the narrative of graduating from the Lafayette County Training School in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas in 1940. Angelou calls attention to the value that she and her community share for education, starting with the community showering the graduates with gifts and ending with the community feeling reassured through understanding the Negro National Anthem at the end. During the graduation ceremony, the commencement speaker dismisses the graduates’ academic accomplishments, and Angelou questions if education holds worth for her. In the end, education equips Angelou to stand up for herself. In short, valuing education inspires people to overcome adversity.