preview

Summary Of Graduation Day By Maya Angelou

Decent Essays
Open Document
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.
Becoming motivated by education to rise above difficulties necessitates valuing education. In Angelou’s community, education constituted a cornerstone in its values, which Angelou recalls: “Among the negroes the tradition was to give presents to children going only from one grade to another. How much more important this was when the person was graduating at the top of the class” (Angelou, 2014, p. 183). The importance of education in the lives of the community manifests itself in the way people treat graduating from one class to another the same way as the graduates’ birthdays or Christmas. The significance of education to the author appears as well. She reflects, “My work alone had earned me a
Get Access
Related
Get Access