Analyzing Maya Angelou's Essay '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.

Maya Angelou’s poetry occupies a very special position in her development as a writer (Chow 1). As a child, Angelou went through five years of complete silence after she was raped at the age of seven years old, by a man named, Mr. Freeman. As a result of telling about her traumatic experience, her uncle’s literally kicked the man that raped her to death. Beings she spoke of her traumatic experience and the result of the man dying, she then imagined that her voice had the potential to kill. Thanks to her teacher, Bertha Flowers, at school Angelou started writing poetry as a means of expression of her life events through her poetry (Chow 1). Poetry thus played an essential part in the recovery of her voice, which in

“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.

In his poem, Flames and Dangling Wire, the first line immediately sets the scene allowing us to have a sense of where we are. The use of a simile in “The smoke of different fires in a row, like fingers spread and dragged to smudge” implies the filthiness of the tip and the smoke rising from the fires. This also causes the air to

Racial segregation was very dominant in the United States in the mid nineteen hundreds. This is the time that Maya Angelou was graduating from the eighth grade in Stamps Arkansas. The theme of racial segregation is well shown by the how different the schools of the African-Americans was compared to that of whites in the essay “Graduation” by Maya Angelou. In the essay the Angelou points out that Lafayette County Training School didn’t have a lawn, hedges, tennis court, climbing ivy as well as a fence the thing the white high school had. In every stage of life, graduation marks the advancement to the next different phase of life and is usually acknowledged by some ceremonies relating to the growth

Maya Angelou is a leading literary voice of the African-American community. She writes of the triumph of the human spirit over hardship and adversity. “Her style captures the ca-dences and aspirations of African American women whose strength she celebrates.” (Library of Chattanooga State, n. d.) Maya has paved the way for children who has had a damaged

“The Scarlet Ibis,” a short story by James Hurst, incorporates many similes that give the reader a better description of the story. Embarrassed by his crippled brother, the narrarator tries to teach Doodle how to walk, and the first time, Doodle “collapsed onto the grass like a half-empty flour sack” (419). This shows Doodle was not ready to learn how to walk and his brother is asking too much of him. Later, Doodle overcomes this challenge and learns to walk, but that is still not good enough for his brother. After the narrator decides he’s going to teach Doodle how to swim, run, and climb trees, he believes “success lay at the end of summer like a pot of gold” (420). Using this simile is a representation of “luck” much like the “luck” that

Metaphor: “Sometimes I hate the calculator instinct in me, the part of me that constantly weighs benefits and risks” (303). The author compares himself to a calculator that changes its plans every time something new happens, like a new part to an equation.

The fact that African-Americans were prejudiced and treated in an ill manner stands as a well-accepted historical statement, but the injured emotions, identity and cultural heritage of them are often neglected. is an autobiography of Maya Angelou in which she recollects her childhood memory and sends a strong message to the reader.

The writing, “Graduation”, written in 1970 by Maya Angelou starts off with subtle meaning. A young Angelou, gets herself ready for her eighth grade graduation and this includes the events leading up to it such as describing important people involved, her dress her mother had sewn for her and the general context of the excitement floating throughout the air. However towards the end of this seemingly happy, enticing story, a darkness is revealed in the racial differences of the time. Being the year 1940 as the setting of this piece America is still highly divided amongst its white and black communities. Angelou’s school is a black school called Lafayette County Training School, whilst the white school is The Central School. The two are mainly separated by race and being the time

She creates an image in the reader’s mind of a small, helpless moth struggling to use his petite and powerless legs. She says, “there was something marvelous as well as pathetic about him” (266). The reader can not only feel sorry for the struggle of the moth, but also admire its

In the “Graduation,” Maya Angelou tells the story of life in 1940s Stampa, Arkansas. Angelou themes were about the partial treatment of African -American- during that time because they were not assessed pro their educated intelligence like white people. She elucidates on how it feels to be discriminated and considered as less than equal. Angelou labels her anger from the racism and pride of graduation day at her segregated school. Similarly, to this podcast, “The Problem We All Live With,” tells the life experiences of Mah’s Ria Pruitt- Martin, who recounts own her experiences as a black kid, and who was treated differently in white school, because of the racial stereotypes and discrimination. Maya Angelou’s experiences as a black student

Angelou was ecstatic about graduating from school, she had put in effort and dedication to be graduating with a high ranking in her class. During the ceremony Mr. Edward Donleavy was a guest speaker and left behind a negative message. He made Angelou feel as if the only thing she could be was a maid, nanny, washerwoman, and other jobs that resembled slavery. Henry Reed, the valedictorian and a person she looked up to, was ending the ceremony by singing the the Negro national anthem. It was at that moment she once again realized who she was and what she was capable of. She took full pride of race and everything they have been through and accomplished; she was not going to stop there.

The first is rather obvious, the speaker's body parts are being compared to something inanimate. This effectively dehumanizes the speaker, for she is just a “paperweight”(7) and a “Jew linen”(9). However, if one looks at this closer, the second metaphor can be noted. Plath is again using a connection to the Third Reich to convey isolation. By establishing the bridge between the speaker and Holocaust victims, and the bridge between the speaker and her alienated body parts, an effective argument for the speakers isolation can be viewed. Additionally, in “Tulips”, the line “Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks” helps enhance Plath’s theme of isolation. This quote is referring to a picture of the speaker’s family on her desk. As much as the narrator wishes to be completely alone, she is reminded by the flowers presence that she has a loving family outside of the entrapping white walls. The way they latch onto her helps exaggerate the desire of the speaker’s family to reconnect with their distant daughter. However, the narrator has made it rather clear that she is content living in a state of constant isolation and separation from the real world. That is why the tulips haunt her so much, they remind her of the liveliness outside of the lifeless, sterilized, and blank hospital walls.

This shows how tiresome war can be and how it drained the energy of those in battle. Another use of simile is “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” (Owen, Wilfred) which emphasizes how the soldier looked after the attack with blood filling his face.