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Maya Angelou 8th Grade Graduation

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Graduation 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. To illustrate the hardships that black people faced during the early 20th century, Angelou wanted to speak from experience about her 8th grade graduation. Now to most, graduations are taken for advantage. They are little more than a blip on a person’s radar. But to Angelou, it was everything. She wrote about it chronologically just to express how important it was. She does this …show more content…

Angelou states how the whole school came down with a “graduation epidemic”. She then goes on and talks about all the possibilities that await her after this. Other classmates feel the same way such as Henry Reed. He was first in class and would deliver a speech at graduation. It wasn’t until the graduation ceremony that the entire tone completely turned around. When the two white men went up on the stage and the one started talking, the entire audience became quiet. The racist remarks sank like a brick with everyone, especially Angelou. When she heard that she will never amount to anything, her entire world started to fell apart. The essay started to become joyful. Henry reed began to sing the Black National Anthem and suddenly she began to feel proud to be black again. Angelou mentions the tone a lot in the story because she wanted the reader to realize that she finally understand what it meant to be black. That no matter how many times you are put down, you will always triumph with a better spirit than

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