I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou has been honored by many universities and throughout her lifetime has received about fifty honorable degrees for her work. Maya Angelou also wrote her essay “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” on the struggles she faced as an African-American women, specifically in the time of her youth. Her audience seems to gravitate towards the general public as well as people who are interested in biographies pertaining to segregation. Throughout the essay the readers see how large of the struggle it is for her to keep her opinion to herself as she argues with her morals. The idea behind the essay is to demonstrate how she struggles greatly with her image, thinking that being African-American is “ugly”. She tends to think she is inferior to everyone, even her own family, which ends up greatly affects her self-confidence. It seems as though in the essay she is trying to find herself and her voice, but makes it severely difficult because she has such a negative body image of herself. It’s evident she wants to make a difference by using her voice, but is not there yet. Out of all of the essays she used the largest amount of rhetorical devices, such as similes, metaphors, personification, and biblical allusions. Overall they rhetoric devices further strengthened her point because they mainly made it easier for the readers to better comprehend her purpose. It did not only help with imagery, but also allowed the readers to connect to other similar events.  She clearly tried to get the readers to understand what she was feeling.

 

http://www.voicedialogueonline.com/how-can-i-stop-self-sabotaging-behaviours-increase-my-self-esteem-and-build-confidence

Caption: Maya Angelou lived with the ideal of being a causion

 

                        Title: Lack of self-confidence

The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch By Richard Wright

American Author, Richard Wright, won the Guggenheim Fellowships award for his creative ability in the arts, and is known for his instant seller book Black Boy that was published in 1945. He writes a classical essay called “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch” on the hardship of a young African-American male during the time of segregation. Wright’s intentions of the short essay is to express what the social norms as a African-American male was considered, such as taking off a hat if you were in an elevator. The hardships he faces are conformity to authority. The audience of the essay seems to be open to the public, but specifically speaking historians or people interested in learning new information on segregation would suit best for the essay. Throughout his essay he uses hyperbole's to further help his point; hyperbole's can be used in a sarcastic way, as well as serves the purpose of emphasizing. In his case he tends to use it in a sarcastic way and to signify his feelings at the time. He also uses repetition to express how much race matters to him, and the rest of the community. He displays this by saying the word “black” multiple times to describe the environment that he lives in. In each stage of his life he deals with the proper way to handle situations when encountering a Caucasian individual. Since his mother indirectly told him how to act with Caucasians he struggled in the beginning with his home and work life. Richard Wright is able to achieve is purpose by really allowing the readers to know what he is feeling, as well as what his action are. If the readers were not aware of his feelings, then he mostly likely would not have been able to achieve his purpose, which was to show the social norms of an African-American.

http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/BusBoycott.htm

Title: Segregation

 

Bus

 

   

              Caption: Richard Wright did try to move away from conformity

The Figure a Poem Makes by Robert Frost

     Robert Frost, a poet who’s won four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry and a graduate of Harvard University, writes “The Figure a Poem Makes” with the sole purpose to show his readers how others should write, by using “originality and initiative”. Frost in his essay not only tells his readers the correct way to write, but as well the wrongs of writing. He emphasizes to his audience, which are other authors, that with every poem they should be different; and ultimately the readers should acquire new information and wisdom with every piece of work. Having a piece of writing be unique can be essential because it allows it to be distinct, and stand out from other pieces of work. He also stresses the importance of using emotion, by saying “no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader” to affirm that readers should be feeling emotions. Other authors are his audience because they are the people who have the power to change the writings in society today; without other authors taking steps towards change it would be more difficult to achieve originality. In the future Frost wishes other authors would not fall into conformity and for their pieces of work to express the truth, not just to entertain the readers. Frost does a good job of achieving his purpose by the use of similes, which allows the readers to picture what Frost is saying by creating images for them. Hopefully this allows the readers to better connect with his concepts and opinions. He also reiterated his point by using the benefits of writing properly and showing the disadvantage of when other people choose to write without a purpose and use other pieces of work as there base.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism

Title: Plagiarism 

Caption: Plagiarism is unoriginality at its finest