I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou and Ego Tripping by Nikki Giovanni Essays

I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou and Ego Tripping by Nikki Giovanni Essays I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou and Ego Tripping by Nikki Giovanni Paper I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou and Ego Tripping by Nikki Giovanni Paper Essay Topic: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Literature Maya Angelou Poems Nikki Giovanni Poems I am going to compare two poems called I know why the caged bird sings By Maya Angelou and Ego Tripping By Nikki Giovanni. Both of these poems are about wanting to be free and what they went through their life, however each of the poems has its own perspective, I know why the caged bird sings is rather in a more negative mood because it is saying she wants to be free, Ego Tripping is more positive because she is saying how free she is and how good her life is. To start I will analyse I know why the caged bird sings By Maya Angelou. In the poem Maya Angelou is talking about black people being trapped and have no say, She betray them by bird trapped in a cage with no speech, The poem mentions Problems she faces throughout her life, and says its no different being free or not because she cant do anything. Caged Bird is a poem about freedom. The free bird symbolizes a person from the white society, and the caged bird symbolizes a person from the black society. In the first stanza, the free bird is described. leaps, floats, dares, claim are used to describe the free bird, which indicates how courageous, powerful and arrogant it is. The second stanza starts with a But, which immediately awakens negative feelings. The words used to describe the caged bird are stalks, clipped and tied, the bird is not able to do what it wants. Also, in the second stanza, unexpectedly the caged bird opens his throat to sing. This action is very ironic, as normally you sing when you are happy, and we expect the free bird to do that. However, the song doesnt have a happy tune. Its a desperate cry for freedom. Theres a description of the cage that the bird is in, bars of rage. It shows similarities to being in a prison. There are no descriptions of the caged birds own point of view, of things unknown but longed for still. He cant see, he doesnt know. The free bird almost takes things for granted, dips his wing in the orange suns rays. Nevertheless, the caged bird can appreciate them. In the third stanza, trill, hill and still, heard and bird do rhyme. Rhyme tries to create a pattern, a neatness. Perhaps like the cage that contains the bird that wants to break free. The birds Life is repentant, maybe thats why theres a rhyme. Another pattern in the poem is between the stanzas: free bird, caged bird, refrain about caged bird; free bird, caged bird, refrain about caged bird. The refrain along with the phrase caged bird repeated in the beginning of all the stanzas which are about the caged bird, are for emphasis. It gives a feeling of how desperate he is. In the fourth stanza, the lines start to get Longer. This may be Linked to having more space to move, and therefore freedom- as it talks about the free bird. In the 3rd and 4th Lines, lawn and own are par rhymes, and own is Like a faint echo of the sound. In the 5th stanza, the Longer Lines may be Linked with the possibility of the bird being free. The words used to describe both the free and the caged bird almost sound the same, but they are different. Perhaps it reflects the two birds that are different whilst the caged bird wants to be Like the free bird. In the last stanza the first couple of lines are saying how the black people wish for freedom and people far away know that they are wishing to be free. In the last line she writes for the cadged bird sings for freedom this is a catchy ending people the reader remembers that most, the audience get told that several times so it is constantly being thrown at them The themes in this poem are freedom, unfairness, slavery and isolation. It may be Linked with gender, individuals, adults Limiting the youth, racial inequality, someone in prison or social oppression. The second poem I am going to compare I know why the caged bird sings with is called Ego Tipping by Nikki Giovanni. The poem is about how a black woman comparing herself to the Gods. She is saying that no one is better than her and she controls everything. This is saying that if your black or white you should be as free and as equal as each other and that everyone on earth should have the same rights and opportunities. In the first stanza she is writing about where she was born and how she grew up, she says i was born in Congo this could mean was bought up in Congo and was born there, Also the first three lines all Start with I this is very repetitive, Nikki Giovanni does this to tell the reader and give them a strong impression on things about her, I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the sphinx this is referring to the slaves that built the sphinx, and how she is classed the same as them, and still they can make good things. She says I am bad, this is short, blunt and effective. It gets the point across that not everyone likes her, and may have done something wrong before. I sat on the throne, drinking nectar with Allah this line is very Strong and meaningful, as she is classing herself high enough to drink nectar with a god, Nectar was a very expensive thing at the times when she wrote this poem so she is saying there is nothing she cannot have. I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe this line shows that she is powerful and can do anything she wants, but selfish, as sending an ice age to Europe would kill millions of people, She is referring that she is controlling the earth and natural disasters. The tears from my birth pains created the Nile, she is now saying she is big and important she creates all the landmarks too. The second short sentence in the poem is I am beautiful this sentence is straight to the point and it also shows that she is proud of herself and she thinks that she is a perfectionist, But however this can also means that she is ugly so she is trying to look better by saying she looks beautiful. In the next stanza she is talking about how she created parts of the earth like she says I gazed onto the forest and burned out the Sahara desert. the time that the poem was written in religions was a big part of peoples lives they believe in god and now Nikki Giovanni is saying she is every god. n stanza five she mentions My son Noah built an ark and I stood proudly at the helm this means that she has given birth to a man who saved the animals, She also says My bowels deliver uranium she is now boasting and saying that even her wastes everyone craves for and it is expensive. The last stanza Nikki Giovanni says I am so perfect so divine so surreal. I cannot be comprehended without my permission. I mean I can fly, like a bird in the sky she says this to tell the ready she is everywhere she is so perfect she cannot make mistakes. The two poems that I have analysed are both very similar in topic but they have different view points towards it, I know why the caged bird sings is more sad and depressing, whereas Ego Tripping is more happy and joyful. The first poem shows how black people get treated badly and being discriminated and then the whites gets all the freedom. The second poem is opposite to the first one because she is saying she is god there is nothing she cant do and she is a African American, This shows is feels free and unlike before they had no freedom.

Eternal Love Through Death Essay Example

Eternal Love Through Death Essay Example Eternal Love Through Death Paper Eternal Love Through Death Paper Essay Topic: Keats Poems and Letters Love, being one of the most debated topics in literature, often serves as a source of inspirations for many of writers and poets, including John Keats. Throughout his life, he wrote countless love poems and letters, addressing his lover – Fanny Brawne. The star, apart from being the symbol of steadfastness and constancy, it is also a metaphor representing Keats himself. Through Keats’ idea of â€Å"Mansion of life†, the poem is consisted of two floors where the first floor displays his passionate love for Brawne while the second floor talks about his inner desire for death. Keats first expresses his ideal, however paradoxical love. There are two essential yet conflicting qualities in this poem – the reality verses the ideal and the immortal verses the mortal. On one hand, he would like to be like a star, steadfast and unchanging. On the other, he dislikes the solitude of the star as it has to watch â€Å"the moving waters† and â€Å"the new soft-fallen mask/Of snow† from afar like a â€Å"sleepless Eremite†. He continues to state that if he â€Å"has to live ever†, he would rather â€Å"pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast†. The ideas to be eternal and to love simultaneously do not go hand in hand. To love, one has to be human and therefore not an immortal, steadfast star. In the last line of the poem, Keats acknowledges that he would like to â€Å"live ever† in love, but he has to be human in order to experience love, which hints that the love between Keats and Brawne will not last and will eventually fade away as time goes by. The other possible alternative to immortalize their love is â€Å"swoon to death†. One of Keats’ letters from 3 May 1818 to Fanny Brawne echoes the idea of â€Å"swooning† and it says â€Å"†¦I love you; all I can bring you is a swooning admiration of your Beauty. †(Poet.  org) This can be interpreted that he wants to die while experiencing intense, ecstatic love or according to the letter, overwhelmed by her beauty. While I was reading Bright Star, I could not help but catch the similarity between Keats and Shakespeare’s idea of love. In the opening of Shakespeare’s sonnet 116, Shakespeare talks about his ideal love and marriage. Keats, being a reader of Shakespeare, is in some way affected or inspired by him. Shakespeare describes love as an â€Å"ever-fixed marks† that â€Å"is never shaken† even in the wildest storms. Keats transformed Shakespeare’s â€Å"ever-fixed† into steadfastness. Keats then moves on to talk about a more sexual and sensuous love. With more explicit descriptions of â€Å"my [his] fair love’s† body parts, those descriptions hint the idea of sex and orgasm. He imagines himself â€Å"pilliow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast†. The word â€Å"ripening† gives a notion of youth, implicating that the lady is young and energetic. Keats also describes the rising and falling of her chest when she takes her â€Å"tender-taken breath†. If he could, he would â€Å"so live ever†. However, it is impossible to live forever and the only solution would be â€Å"swoon to death†. Keats did not explicitly tell the readers what it means to be â€Å"swoon to death† and leave us a lot of room for imaginations. The word â€Å"swoon† and other erotic images of the lady’s body parts bring us to the subtext of the poem – sex. La petite mort is a French idiom or euphemism for orgasm, meaning little death. According to Oxford Dictionaries, â€Å"swoon† means â€Å"to enter a state of ecstasy or rapture†. Whether he intended to talk about sex at the end of the poem is still indefinable as we have no idea of what Keats was thinking when he wrote the poem. Though Keats did not write any overly sexual poetry, there is always a strong erotic indication in many of his works. If the sexual subtext is intended in the poem, I believe that it creates a nice denouement to the poem. Keats’ obsession with death and his love for Fanny are intertwined seamlessly throughout the poem. In one of his letters, he states â€Å"I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death† (Poet. org). Not only is Keats intimidated by death, to some extent he is also intrigued by it. Even though he is worried about the approaching death, to him the promise of death is comforting and soothing. The only resolution to achieve the paradoxical ideal of being eternal as well as experiencing love is death. Through death, immutability and steadfastness can be achieved. Keats has seen many people died in his lifetime. His father died when he was eight; his mother died from tuberculosis when he was 14; his brother Tom died also from tuberculosis when he was 19. Along with his family’s deaths, he has also seen a lot of patients died as he was also a medical student. Therefore, constantly seeing people die in a way reminds him of the transience and the mutability of life. There are some religious references in the second quatrain of the poem. All these references, other than conveying the loneliness and the solitude of the star, also illustrate his longing for the promising death. The poem was written in 1819, the same year when Keats contracted with tuberculosis. The word â€Å"ablution† is heavily loaded with connotations, both religion and about death. From the Oxford Dictionary, â€Å"ablution† refers to the washing or cleansing of the body†. In Christianity, there are different forms of ablution and one of them is the preparation before the burial of a dead person. Here Keats is hinting that his death is near and the priest will cleans his body after his death with â€Å"the moving waters†. Further Keats also mentions the â€Å"soft-fallen mask/Of snow† in the following two lines. Seasons always act as symbols of different stages of human life in literature. Spring refers to birth or new beginning; summer means maturity; autumn represents old age while winter symbolizes death. In line 7-8, with â€Å"the mountains and moors† covered in snow, such explicit image suggests that death is approaching. Though death is coming, Keats is not browbeaten. Yet, he is fascinated with death as it helps him to accomplish the co-existence of eternity and love. Bright Star is a poem that can be read on many different levels. To me, the poem is not merely a declaration of his ardent love for Fanny Brawne. It is also an expressive lyric poem addressing his awe as well as obsession with death. The main themes of the poem are smoothly woven together and this showcases Keats’ expressiveness and his wit. Keats, John. Bright Star. n. d.  poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21012

Discourse-Specific Narrative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Discourse-Specific Narrative - Essay Example This essay discusses my literacy history and how it has been developed as a scholar through discourse communities and sponsors during my past and present experiences in reading, writing, research, and critical thinking experiences that await you in the discourse community particular to your major or career. Research demonstrates accounts of literacy attainment as well as language learning, also shows literacy teaching practices, development processes and writing struggles among scholars (Casanave and Vandrick 17). Such philosophical studies have resulted in creating considerable benefits to interested parties by permitting them to explore the scholar’s experiences in some detail (Bruner 105). The relationship between learning and literacy has been highlighted by many researchers. (Devereux and Wilson 124) affirm that the development of an array of literacy practices necessary for a particular discourse community, for example teachers, is crucial because of the close relationship between learning and literacy since scholars need to be able interpret a text, create meaning from it, know the relationships between text structure and function, draw conclusions, and develop the ability to critically think. According to these authors (Devereaux and Wilson) one of the most significant challenges for educators in is to develop forms of learning support that will present students with opportunities to develop their understanding of relevant concepts through literacy. My literacy experience started back at home. Most of my foundation literacy skills came from my family and close friends. My parents instructed me at home during my early schooling years. I remember my parents holding up using a portable blackboard to write simple vowels. I can memorize her voice repeatedly saying A, E, I, O, U. putting all this information in my head was boring and recurring at the time and that memory of boredom is fixed in my mind permanently. Although I struggled with