Maya Angelou Thesis

Poetry is quite a force to be reckoned with. It makes people contemplate all sorts of things - love and loss, life and death. It is something that affects and connects and brings people across the world together, and the poetry of Maya Angelou is especially successful in doing exactly this. Angelou’s poems are extremely powerful and she has a way with words which are capable of evoking in the reader her exact feelings and beliefs about life, and love, racial and gender inequality, music, and the difficulties of living life. In her poems “Still I Rise,” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and “Equality,” Maya Angelou uses repetition, antithesis, and diction to show that despite a painful and tragic past, it is possible for people to overcome

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” juxtaposes two images – one of a free bird who “leaps / On the back of the wind / And…names the sky his own” and one of a caged bird who “stalks / Down his narrow cage / …[and] stands on the grave of dreams” (1-26). She goes back and forth dedicating each stanza to depicting either the caged bird or the free bird creating an obvious antithesis between the two. By the end it is painfully clear that the free bird is happy and hopeful and light while the caged bird is despaired and fearful and dark. The stark contrast and antithesis between these two images makes both of them stand out equally, highlighting the degree of racism and inequality she is trying to express. Angelou also juxtaposes two contrasting images and ideas in her poem “Still I Rise.” She writes, “Out of the huts of history’s shame… / Up from a past that’s rooted in pain” followed by “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave / I am the dream and the hope of the slave” (33). She begins by painting a picture full of gloom and pain and she turns this around and makes light of a very dark situation. In choosing to put these clearly contrasting ideas near each other in the poem, Angelou puts an equal emphasis on both parts. She wants people to be reminded of the horrible past, but she also, more importantly, wants people to be encouraged and to have the hope to rise above that past. These contrasts are apparent to everyone: Marguerite Johnson writes in her analysis of Angelou’s poetry that, “[Her] poems respond to black ancestors’ embittered cries with an indomitable exclamation that African Americans will rise above all inequities and flourish” (Johnson 6). In this, Johnson perfectly describes Angelou’s use of antithesis and juxtaposition. She changes quickly between two images, often coupling these