Angelou's Culture

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Jeff Weiner once said, “You have to maintain a culture of transformation and stay true to your values.” Which to begin with means even though your culture changes or it’s transformed you must stay true to what you believe in. Such as in the poem “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou she expresses the same message by showing what she believes about her culture even if it is being changed by history. In Angelou’s poem she uses repetition, rhyme, simile, and metaphor to convey the message of staying true to your culture even if it changes through time. In the beginning of the poem, Angelou sounds very self confident about herself and she uses simile to represent how she feels. Even if history tells lies about her culture and people may want to dirty …show more content…

She remember who she is and she uses a metaphor to refer herself as “I’m a black Ocean.”(Line33) Angelou reflects on the past and how much pain it really was as she said “Up from a past that’s rooted with pain.”(Line 31) Only she remembers the painful truth of what really was her culture and history about. Even if people change it she stays true to her culture that she grew up with. She can tell the truth about what happened in the past “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” (Line 40) As she remembers she will not let anyone shame her culture with “bitter, twisted lies” because that was not her culture. But one thing is for sure, “She will Rise”. Another thing to conclude her poem would be that she uses rhyme to make the strong words stand out. Such as “Shame”, “Pain”, “Eyes”, and “Rise.” etc. The poet uses rhyme words to make the meaningful words stand out and prove her message. Shame would be a good word to Rhyme with Pain because people try to shame her culture and say lies that may be painful to her or people in her culture because they are not true at all. Another is Eyes and Rise, which brings tears to her eyes but she will not let them be seen because she is strong and no matter what she will rise and stand tall with pride from her

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