"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about – things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' ( Fitzgerald 17). In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway, the narrator, learns that even when you are surrounded by friends you can still be very lonely. In the poem, Alone by Maya Angelou, we are told a story about the narrator laying in bed searching for answers …show more content…
“It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about – things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (Fitzgerald 17). After giving birth to their daughter Daisy realizes that her husband Tom didn’t show up for the birth of his child causing for Daisy to feel lonely. Upon learning that the child was a girl she begins to cry. Daisy fears that her daughter would have a similar fate as she had. As in marrying a man that would make it a habit of abandoning her in their …show more content…
She repeats these lines to reiterate that everyone needs companionship. Angelou says that she has come to the conclusion that everyone needs someone. As she continues through the poem she gives an example of a wealthy family. She says that their wives run around like banshees and their children sing their blues. They have expensive doctors to try to cure their hearts of stones. But no one can make it out here alone. By giving an example of a millionaire she is telling us that money can't buy companionship as well as saying that not even their expensive doctors can give them anything to fill the void of companionship. Angelou follows by saying that everyone needs someone for the times in their life when they are going through a storm. She can hear the human race crying because they are trying to go through life alone. She adds this part to her poem to give the reader evidence as to why they can’t go through life alone. The storms of life are too much for one person to go through alone. Having a companion makes the storms of life
In romantic words, the poet expresses how much she does think of love. She state it clear that she will not trade love for peace in times of anguish.
...fe she really knew and felt deep down to the core of her being what the words truly meant. The words had brought back her hope and pride in herself and in her community. What Leavy had said was a fallacy and they could as they have in the past rise above the world's bigotry. Righteousness returned to Angelou and the entire community; "we were on top again."(841).
Hope is an attribute in life that many people cling to. It gives people courage and reasons to continue striving in everyday life, especially in the toughest of times. The autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, published in 1969, followed Angelou’s childhood growing up in the South as a minority, the problems that she faced because of that, how she overcame those problems, and how she still found hope. The theme represented in this autobiography is that in every storm faced in life it may feel like there’s nothing left; however, there will always be hope that can still be found.
Throughout the novel the reader see’s Daisy as this innocent character that knows what her husband, Tom Buchanan, and his mistress, Myrtle Wilson do in their spare time but never acts on it. In reality she knows exactly what is going on but refuses to let that come between her and her husband. Daisy is introducing her and Tom’s daughter to Nick Carraway, the narrator and her cousin, when she says, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy wants her daughter, Pammy, to be exactly like her, and to know what is going on but not to care. She wants her to act like a fool. This quote relates to the line in the poem, “Why should the world be over-vise, / in counting all our tears and sighs” (Laurence Dunbar 6-7). The line in the poem is a reflection on how the world counts all the bad things and never see’s the good. The lines in the poem are a reflection on how the world only counts the bad things even if they see the good. Even though Tom continuously cheated on Daisy she still loved him and always will no matter what comes between them. Daisy wants her daughter to b...
It is her hope that the segregation will end, and the black people will be equal to the white race. The way in which Angelou portrays her life makes the reader feel pity at times, for the way Maya and her family is treated, rage at other when Maya acts badly, and joy when good things happen for their family.
Angelou uses repetition of words and phrases to emphasize King’s gentle strength and encourage the world to take up her lifelong fight. A sense of importance is imposed when she repeats the stem of her sentences, creating a rhythm compelling to her audience. For instance, the utilisation of “she believed,” said over and over again introduces an idea, while the repeated phrase “I stand here,” puts it into motion. She wraps up her use of anaphoras with the powerful call for action: “I mean to say I want to see…” Repetition is used to stimulate emotion and solidarity in the audience. The word “family” is constantly used, reminding listeners that although they not
This poem is structured within eight stanzas, the first seven stanzas contain four lines within each stanza, however,the last stanza contains fifteen lines, with major emphasis on, “I rise”. The last fifteen lines may have been used to conclude the poem at the end, for one last time show the audience her head held up high. During the poem, the tone throughout is positive and negative, although you may hear the strength and passion in her voice about overcoming these problems, she still presents anger. This allows the reader to experience in sections how Angelou really felt.
Maya Angelou’s poem is structured in a quatrain format. The first few paragraphs are set out in such a way that it explains to us why she is rising; the poem compromises of a stanza of four lines, each of the same length.
Daisy Buchanan, in reality, is unable to live up the illusory Daisy that Gatsby has invented in his fantasy. After Daisy and Tom Buchanan leave another one of Gatsby’s splendid parties, Fitzgerald gives the reader a glimpse into what Gatsby’s expectations are. Fitzgerald claims that “he wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’” (109). Here it is revealed that Gatsby’s one main desire is for Daisy to go willingly...
In her autobiographical novel, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou relates her story as a poor black girl living in racially segregated Stamps, Arkansas. As the story unfolds, she describes relationships with her family and members of the community, her love of reading, her feeling of inequality, the racial prejudice she suffers, and her experiences as a single mother. What makes Angelou heroic is her perseverance over a multitude of odds. In the beginning of the novel, the reader learns that Angelou is living with her grandmother because her birth mother abandoned her. With no direction or positive influence in her life, a white woman introduced her to “her first white love” – William Shakespeare –who befriended Angelou. Reading
This stanza is then repeated, word for word, two more times throughout the poem (23-25, 35-37). Angelou does this to emphasize her message in the poem. If someone reads something once, they may not realize how significant it really is. By repeating those two words and that phrase multiple times, Angelou showed the reader just how important it is to find somebody that cares about you, so you don't have to be alone and unhappy. Angelou uses multiple different kinds of figurative language to enhance the message of the story.
During the confrontation between Gatsby and Tom Buchanan about Daisy, she is talked about like she is a possession to be won over. During the argument Nick “glances at Daisy who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her husband” (Fitzgerald, page 143). Gatsby and Buchanan tell Daisy what to say instead of allowing her to tell her own truths, and if she does start to speak up for herself she is quickly quieted down. Daisy states at the beginning of the novel while talking about finding out the sex of her child that, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald, page 16). Daisy is the only female character in the novel who understands that no matter what a woman accomplishes, she will always be downcasted based on her gender. This outlook is what allows her to be controlled by Gatsby and Buchanan, because she doesn’t believe that anything she can do will make her more of a human to them. Myrtle on the other hand, while still a married woman, isn’t able to see her powerlessness. She feels powerful enough to stand up to Tom and chant Daisy’s name over and over again until he breaks her nose (Fitzgerald, page 37). This scene demonstrates the way that men handled women if they ever did feel confident enough to speak for themselves. One final scene from the novel that really
Loneliness is a reoccurring theme in all types of literature. “Eleanor Rigby,'; by John Lennon and Paul McCartney is a fine example of the theme of loneliness in poetry. The two characters in "Eleanor Rigby" are compared by their loneliness through the extensive use of symbols.
Given these points, Angelou’s widely use of devices, sentence length, and tenses allows the reader to capture the theme of her poem Men. Angelou shows how women are somewhat treated then and now. She lets the reader know that even after a man may have hurt a woman, a woman still would have a desire to go back to them because we are curious to know of them. She presents the idea that women are oppressed to men – women like Angelou who have had bad experiences with them. Overall, Angelou’s poem is like a story that presents men as head honcho over women and the affect that they bring upon
Due to the time period she wrote in, Angelou would be criticized for her ability to write, “without apology,” of the fearful life she lived. However, now that is the reason as to why her work is so highly praised. Yet, critics feel as if Angelou’s work is simply overused and not appreciated for what it truly is. Instead of looking at Angelou as a poet, people look at her as an, “inspirational public speaker,” and can often be found on the front of a, “Hallmark greeting card,” instead of the pages in a textbook. Angelou doesn’t really show this criticism in her work but she does represent the criticism she received as African American woman poet in her time period. She often would discuss how people would misuse her race and treat them like nothing, and, “may trod” them “in the very dirt.” But despite these harsh criticisms of her work, Angelou continued writing of her struggles, and brought to life the hardships she had to face whilst living in this time period, which in the end, become what she was most critically acclaimed for, and the reason that out of the, “huts of history’s shame,” she conquered the fears, not only of her past, but of saying the words she used to be afraid to say.