Maya Angelou Still I Rise Essay

She is then threatened and told not to tell an adult if she wants to save her brother’s life. This leads to a long period of time where she refuses to speak to anyone. She writes of this time, "There was an army of adults, whose motives and movements I just couldn't understand and who made no effort to understand mine" (Angelou 72). This may be one of the loneliest periods in Angelou's life, but in some ways, it made her stronger and more able to survive in the white's world, even though it was a terrible ordeal.

Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” was published in 1978 at one of the most productive and successful periods of Angelou’s career. “Still I Rise” tells about bouncing back and rising up past oppression and hate. The speaker in Angelou’s poem talks to a direct audience, asking them questions, announcing to them that no matter what they do, she will always rise back up. The poem is broken up into quatrains, although the last two stanzas use the repetition of the phrase “I rise” between the complete lines. The author uses figurative language in every stanza of her poem and uses similes and metaphors to create imagery and to get the tone and the theme of the poem across to the reader. Angelou uses figurative language to convey the message of resilience and succeeding even through hatred.

“Still I Rise,” written by poet Maya Angelou, has a blend of tones. Some are playful, funny, angry, confident, and bitter. However, the poem’s tone, as the title implies, is conquering."Still I Rise" is a poem about strength, perseverance, and confirmation. It is about what is expected of a person and what that person is able to do in spite of the expectations.

‘Still I Rise’ was written by an Afro-American poet Maya Angelou and consists of a mixture of tones, such as: playful, angry, comical and bitter. Slavery was long abolished but Angelou saw its effects on society and black people. In this poem she declares that no hatefulness of society will determine her success. In the poem ‘Still I Rise’ she is not only proclaiming her triumph but also calls others to stand up for themselves and live against society’s expectations.

Angelou begins the excerpt narrating the “graduation epidemic” surrounding the town in the third person. Starting with paragraph 6, Angelou shifts to a first-person narrative, which provides an informative insight into her personal experiences regarding her graduation. This shift in perspective marks important stylistic differences: initially Angelou focuses on conveying the experiences of the class as a whole, whereas after paragraph 6 she focuses on her own experiences, through which several contrasts can be drawn. Rhetorically, these contrasts signify that identical rhetorical strategies will have completely different connotations. For example, Angelou’s classmates whose “future[s] rode heavily on their shoulders,” emulate not Angelou, as “youth and social approval allied themselves with [her] and [she] trammeled memories of slights and insults.” Without the shift in perspective, no contrasts could be drawn between paragraphs 1 through 5 and 6 through

    Angelou utilizes metaphors to prove to her readers that she is determined and willing to end the conflict of racial segregation in America. She describes the past slavery and the harsh terms that her ancestors used to go through, but now in the current situation of America, she can come, “out of the huts of history’s shame /I rise” (29-30). The audience is reminded of the fact that slavery is now in the past, and Angelou does this in order to rhetorically ask the audience ‘why America overcame slavery. ’ She describes herself emerging from a ‘hut of history’s shame’ as she is referring to the huts that slaves used to be kept in, as well as proving to be the generation that puts an end the shameful segregation in America, ‘I rise.’ The relation of rising from a slave hut into the world reveals the statement being made that Angelou will no longer accept the African American’s current treatment. She goes further on the topic of America’s history of slavery and

‘Still I Rise’ show other aspects of the problems that women face. Within the poem, Angelou uses repetition to accentuate powerful imagery. She repeats “I Rise” throughout the poem and frequently leaves it as a two-word line. This draws, even more, attention to the image of her continuously rising up against anyone may put her down. Angelou also employs the use of a

In stanza four Maya Angelou asks a series of rhetorical questions in lines thirteen and fourteen. She knows that people want to see her broken, weak and crying from the criticism and hateful words that have been said to her. She not only had to deal with criticism from being an African-American in a time when whites did not accept them into their society but also dealing with the fact that she was an African-American woman. During the fifties women were expected to marry and be a helping hand around the house. They were not expected to be in the working field. Just imagine how hard it had to be to make as an African-American women trying to achieve her goals. But she refuses to show how difficult it was through her emotion she just rises above it.

Another use of a metaphor in the last stanza relates back to the key idea of the poem. In the line, ‘I am the dream and the hope of the slave,’ Maya Angelou is directly comparing herself to what a slave dreams about, which is equality and freedom. She is calling herself the ‘ambassador’ of equal rights, and therefore stating herself as a leader who will make the first step to rise up against racism and fight for equal rights. This again shows her strong, powerful approach to overcoming racial inequality.

Maya Angelou employs hateful diction to show that racists are trying to oppress her all throughout her life. Angelou starts off the poem by saying, “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies,” (1-2). Angelou begins to use hateful diction, by incorporating the phrases, “bitter”, and “twisted lies”. The literal definition of bitter is “angry, hurt, or resentful.” Angelou takes advantage of the word bitter and manipulates the meaning to reveal the elevated amount of resent the supremacists had towards her success. Angelou utilizes the word “bitter” to prove that in her community there are racists that despise her and are bitter towards her because they want to keep her on the bottom of society, but she won’t let them. In the text above, she utilizes the word “lies” because lies are usually in a mean connotation; moreover, they are never good and they create these lies to keep her from rising. When Angelou symbolically states, “write me down in history”, she is trying to make a point for herself before hateful messages go ‘down in history.’ Shortly thereafter, she explains how they are treating her in the community and says, “You may shoot me with your words, / You may cut me with your eyes, / You may kill me with your hatefulness” (21-23). Angelou uses damaging terms and “you”, because she is attempting to enforce her feelings and connect to the reader on a more complex level . The author utilizes the words “shoot” which is a word for killing or wounding a person with a gun and “words” in the same

She compares herself to a "black ocean, leaping and wide," an indication of the infinite power of her resilience. She closes the poem claiming that she is the "dream and the hope of the slave" followed by the thrice repeated phrase, "I rise." “Angelou captures the both the repression and the progress of the African American people over the course of history.” (Bouchard 1) I will use this essay in my final paper to analyze and determine the importance of simile in this poem and how it deeply affects the way in which the poem is meant to be

“If you will study war no more. Come, clad in peace, and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I and the Tree and the rock were one” A sense of childhood is brought about when Angelou mentions singing, which gives the reader or listener an idea of innocence, and cries for an understanding of

Still I Rise is a poem written by Maya Angelou. Through this poem, Angelou has used third person which allows the audience to relate to the social issue that she is introducing. Maya Angelou structured this poem in a certain way to be able to portray how much this issue meant to her emotionally and historically. The aim of this poem is to make audiences throughout the whole world aware of racism and discrimination. Maya wrote this piece to show that no matter how many times white people discriminate against blacks that they will always find the positives in everything while staying strong and

Maya Angelou is one out of the best known poets. She has written a lot of poems that inspires and assist people with their lives. She has a “desire humbleness to learn and experience all that life has to offer her” (gale biography in context, “Maya Angelou More than a Poet”) which makes her poems have a meaning to them. In addition, Maya Angelou got a lot of pieces of poems considered equality to her experience as a human of the United States during race times and her experience as a person who worked with other civil right activist. Maya Angelou uses deep themes that leaves the reader to think about the topic is being talked about. In her poem, “Still I Rise” she talks metaphorically about discrimination. In the poem, it states, “does my haughtiness offend you? ( the poetry foundation, “Maya Angelou”). This quote from the poem shows how the rest of the poem is about people believe they is better than other people and that the other people should suffer because they are inferior to the people, but the people being abused should not be embarrassed of who they are and be thankful for life(“Maya Angelou More than a Poet 1”).

This poem was written in 1978 during segregation. Being an African American during this time, Maya Angelou is doing her part in getting her voice out there to hopefully make a difference. "Still I Rise" is a poem that addresses the plight of American blacks, but has a message that can cross racial and cultural boundaries because it is about overcoming adversity” (Bouchard 9). The poem starts off by saying “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies” (Angelou lines 1-2). These words send the message to the reader that they can say what they want about her race. Around 1978 her race was not talked about highly. Statements were being made that were far from the truth about the African American race. The way they were treated was harsh, “You may trod me in the very dirt / But Still, like dust, I’ll rise” (Angelou lines 3-4). This is a visual on how they were treated, they were belittled yet fearless. Angelou lets the reader know that no matter how harsh she is treated,