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‘Still I Rise’ Analysis

Still I rise is a poem written by Maya Angelou. It is a poem which tries to convey to her audience how she is able to overcome whatever comes her way because she is strong enough to go through it all and overcome the challenges she faces. This is especially the challenge of being looked down upon by other people because of who she is and what she has gone through. Therefore it is a poem which has an appealing ability to so many people who feel rejected and those who wish to do something extra and change the way other people view them. Maya Angelou was born in 1928 in St Louis Missouri. She had a difficult childhood whereby she was raped after sometime when her parents split up. Therefore her childhood as well as her adulthood experiences form the manner in which she writes this poem and the ideas she passes to the audience and to the person she wants to read this poem. Therefore this paper gives an analysis of the pome still I rise concentrating on the theme and the literary elements of the poem.

Maya Angalou was a civil rights activist, poet, award winning author as well as a dancer. She went to stay with her brother to her grandmother’s place. She had a bad childhood as she was raped. However she had good times with her brother when they formed a bond which was very strong with her brother who later gave her the name Maya which up to now she is known by and for. It is in high school that her political ideas were conceived and she began to get a listening to several other people around her. In 1952 she got married which she did not last but she became a singer by Maya Angelo name.

This poem is her kind of proclamation on how she can be able to rise above the society and the demands as well as the ills that the society place on her because she is a woman who is black. Therefore she also calls the others who have been downgraded in the society to also rise above the issues which the society presents them with and learn that it is possible to be better and good people who are not controlled by some aspects of the society. The title of the poem specifically brings our aspirations when interpreted in light of the whole poem. The title talks of how she can rise up against the society and how this is an important aspect of her later life whereby she is strong enough to undo or overcome whatever is heaped on her.

The major theme in this poem is rising up against the forces and the major inclinations which tend to affect a lot of people and make them unable to bear fruits towards who they really are. This is displayed through her life as she became a very prominent leader who made efforts to make sure that no one was looked down upon especially the black women through her work in Africa as well as her collaboration with martin Luther king junior. Like dust in the first stanza she says she will always rise up.

There are very many literary devices used in this poem and some of them include alliteration, anaphora, similes and many more. Alliteration is the style whereby sounds or letters are repeated consciously in closely related or successive group of words. Alliteration is present in the last line of the 8th stanza and the first line of the 9th stanza. This is displayed by huts of history and gifts and gave. Enjambment if the cutting off of a sentence before its natural ending point. This is visible in lines two and three of the first stanza display this element. She also uses similes in this work as she states that she laughs like she has gold mines. Anaphora is used in the fifth stanza as she repeats the phrase “you may” as she begins the lines.

Therefore this pome can be summarized as an embodiment of a story which is an inspiration to many young black women and ladies who are being encouraged to rise up against what the society think about them and prove to the world that they can be better than what the world sees and thinks about them. Therefore all the literary elements used in this poem act to support the theme and support what it talks about in a creative manner.

Work cited

Angelou, Maya, and Heywood Hale Broun. Still I rise. Jeffrey Norton Publishers, 1994.