The previous speech was given by Edward Donleavy. Just like the valedictorian, he gave a speech about all the potential the current graduating class had, but his audience is beyond just the graduates. Donleavy talks about the academic opportunities that the graduates may have, along with the main point of his speech, athletic opportunities. The speech is delivered with no disregard and drills the unwanted acceptance that the best achievement of the graduating class would be to become an athlete or a service worker.
The entire speech relies on ethos to help persuade the audience, before him, to re-elect him, and therefore he needs them to believe his claims about the Nergro community. Angelou uses careful phrases to tear Edward Donleavy apart. Angelou describes vividly, how all her excitement and anticipation for that day that had been built up had been completely drained.
A song that is full of pathos. Reed had managed to bring back the energy that Angelou had lost saving her graduation day. She felt awful about her situation, but afterward, she felt as if she was on top and brought positivity back. Angelou was able to broaden existential questions to direct towards the black community.
Juxtaposition is also used when the introduction to the National Negro Anthem help Angelou when she becomes more aware that she is in fact black and that the old literature does not address her situation, nor many others situation in segregated America. In the essay, Angelou uses allusion to refer to Nat Turner, George Washington, and Harriet Tubman to give examples of African Americans who were able to have notable achievements.
Society during segregation and before, slavery, had biases about the roles Black Americans would and could play within the society. Providing the examples of those Black Americans that were lucky in being successful shows to the audience that it can be done. Another rhetorical device used by Angelou in the essay is foreshadowing. If things were becoming depressing, the sentences were sarcastic and short in length. At any point where things were being to excite her, the sentences were descriptive and long.
In the end, despite the hardships of her day during graduation, Maya Angelou stood out front the social norms of being a service worker or an athlete, she became a writer. The essay uses ethos, pathos, descriptive imagery and tones to effectively convey a message. We will occasionally send you account related emails. Education , Literature. Download for Free. Watch out! Emotions can be thoughts and actions.
I believe emotions play a role in our actions because these emotions drive us to act in some way or another. Being of Hispanic ethnicity and growing up in a predominately white town, I can say that I had the privilege to never feel this stat on my shoulders.
In the essay, "Graduation", Maya Angelou states about the unfair treatment of whites against the African Americans during the graduation. There are situations in life where we feel discriminated but no matter what we have to gain the strength to prosper.
In this article, Angelou talks about her eight-grade graduation experience. Angelou mainly focused about the unfair treatment of African Americans during that time because. Perseverance through separation and persecution forges dignity in an individual. The separation of the African American displays the importance of graduation day. Angelou was only graduating from. What remains a day of joy, anticipation, and worry for many young individuals? Graduation day!
Throughout her memoir, Angelou discloses the impression of underlying oppression received throughout the graduation speech delivered by a high profile white man named Mr. Edward Donleavy. After detailing how excited she was for her ceremony, and then expressing how furious she was at Donleavy's comments, she successfully uses an appeal to pity to demonstrate that she was deprived of a special graduation ceremony.
That is, until Henry Reed speaks. Angelou describes the graduation ceremony in great detail from the moment she wakes up in bed to the end of the ceremony. Angelou then continues her description of the joyous day, writing with extreme detail, which compels the readers to remember their own graduation. Moreover, her descriptions seem realistic and practical because not every moment is cheerful; there are some awkward moments.
However, she surprises us with unexpected details, such as the speech by Donleavy. Recalling from our own graduation ceremonies, speeches are supposed to inspire students, not suppress their aspirations.
Nevertheless, what also shocked the readers was her optimism in the end of the story, despite her previous tone of disappointment. She informs the reader of the smallest details, such as the embroidered daisies on the hem of her dress paragraph 7. In addition, she shows her pride at being top of the class paragraph Finally, she fulfills the readers' expectations on the feelings someone would experience leading up to a graduation by showing how happy she is that her family is proud of her and giving her special treatment in the days before the graduation paragraphs However, she challenges the readers' expectations with the guest speaker.
At usual graduations, the guest speaker's speech is usually tasteful and enjoyed. However, the guest speaker at her graduation is horrible and leaves the audience feeling angry and hopeless paragraphs In addition, she discusses how most of the graduating students in the high school will not be going on to college paragraph 4.
Though most modern readers won't fully understand the tremendous importance of Maya Angelou's graduation based on their own graduation memories seeing that most modern readers appreciate graduation as an annual and nation-wide event rather than as a history-making occurrence as Maya Angelou's black community would have understood it , this essay's personal power is helped by the fact that most readers can cluck appreciatively as they remember their own graduations and draw comparisons.
The reader is able to juxtapose his or her own most likely favorable or indifferent opinions of graduation to the highly emotional and formative graduation of Maya Angelou. Whereas most graduates probably just go through the ceremonial motions, Maya Angelou is actually set on a certain life path by her graduation, her graduation does in fact have a huge effect on her. Like modern high-school graduations, there is a class valedictorian and other top-of-the-class students including Angelou herself.
However, in modern graduations it is taken for granted that these students will go on to be very successful, though most also acknowledge that that is not always the case. In Maya Angelou's case, however, her and her friends are forced to realize that all their hard work and grade-earning cannot change the color of their skin, and the usually private fear that high academic performance doesn't mean much in the long run becomes a public fear.
Maya Angelou's unique graduation experience is a very romantic one, which, tragic as it is, is perhaps far more meaningful and desirable than the cookie-cutter graduations of modern classes. Maya Angelou begins by describing a graduation as everyone would expect it to be.
Not necessarily a graduation all her readers would have experienced, but one they could relate to based on cultural expectations of what a graduation is. After she has set this up by describing the preparations, the expectations, and the involvement of the whole community, all the while subtly sneaking in indications of the poorer quality campus and resources available to the African American school, she describes how the underlying truth the whole community was aware of was laid painfully bare.
After describing all the joyous preparations, she explains that they were really just a mask covering the fact that everyone knew an education was little use to them because of their race. Although Angelou does finish on an ultimately positive note, the path she chooses to get there and the details she includes surprise us after the beginning that lives up to our preconceived notions of what a graduation is. Sarah Brenneman. From the start of the essay, Angelou fulfills the readers expectations for what graduation includes through numerous descriptions and observations.
Angelou describes the overall feeling before graduation as being energetic, happy, and anxious. These are all very typical feelings of graduation no matter what school one attends. She also talks about the exciting preperations for graduation, such as all of the underclassmen setting up, and the graduates watching these proceedings. Angelou also describes her dress in great detail, talking about how everyone thinks she looks beautiful and how it is simply perfect.
These are all very common aspects of graduation and what it usually includes. However, Angelou then goes on to inform the reader about the guest speaker that comes to the graduation. Usually, the guest speaker at a graduation gives insight to the graduates and leaves them feeling hopeful and ready for the outside world.
Nevertheless, Mr. Edward Donleavy, the guest speaker, leaves the graduates with feelings of anger, frustration, and hopelessness. This key observation is how Angelou surprises the reader by giving insight to how the speaker actually left the class feeling angry not happy. Angelou fulfills the reader's expectations fro what graduation includes with the events and emotions leading up to graduation. For example, she describes the anticipation and excitement. She explains that everyone was looking forward to the graduation.
Also, Angelou writes of her mother adding to her dress, as new or at least nicer clothes are often a part of graduation. However, Angelou surprises us with the commencement speech by Edward Donleavy. He suggests that the African Americans can only be star sports players rather than intellectuals or inventors, as the white people can be. While speeches given at graduations are meant to inspire graduates, this speech simply tells them that unless they want to play sports, there was no real hope for success in the future.
Maya Angelou is successfully able to portray the excitements of a graduation that the reader can relate with. The graduation march is something that all readers probably experienced at their own graduations. Angelou goes on to express her feelings of excitement, but also other feelings of impending doom due to the fact that she feels the day is going too perfectly.
She recalls the excitement she felt when she opened her eyes to find her graduation present: a Mickey Mouse watch. However, Angelou also had a feeling that the day was going so well, she just knew something had to mess it up.
Some readers may be able to relate to this superstition, while others do not. The most surprising aspect of her graduation was the blatantly racist white man that delivers the commencement speech. In only a couple of minutes, he is able to break apart the excitement and hope that was building up in the graduates the whole day. The speaker, Edward Donleavy, discusses how the African Americans of the school will not have a future in education, only athletics at the most, and that higher education is reserved for the whites.
What is even more surprising was that the students were able to bring themselves together again by proudly singing the Negro national anthem. All within a small time frame at a celebratory event, the expected meets the unexpected as Angelou sails from euphoria to rock bottom, only to be brought back up again by the unity and courage of her class.
Maya Angelou describes a typical graduation held in the South, as one that temporarily encompasses the town and the majority of its inhabitants. Although perhaps not as impressive, suffice it to say that similar graduation ceremonies have been witnessed or participated in by many of Angelou's readers.
Furthermore, Angelou's perception of the significance of graduation lays the foundation for the rest of the essay in that she fulfills the excitement and emotion the reader might associate with graduation, while, additionally, surprises the reader with details specific to her struggle living as a minority. Angelou posits, "Near evening I was too jittery to attend to chores, so Bailey [her brother] volunteered to do all before his bath" The reader can relate to Angelou's feeling of excitement and anxiety when recalling one's own preparations for their graduation day.
Furthermore, Angelou declares, "I hoped the memory of the morning would never leave me" Undoubtedly, the reader can understand the sentimental moments experienced on a day of significant passage, much like a graduation ceremony. However, the reader may not be able to identify with Angelou's addition of the indignity associated with being preached the inability to instigate sufficient change in life because of one's race.
Angelou solemnly generalizes, "We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous" She continues to surprise us with her epiphany and acceptance of the resilience of her race when stating, "The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls
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