In "Hanging Fire", Andre Lorde writes the poem that sets a tone in motion. As the audience reads the poem, they can feel as if the poem is in their thoughts. She discusses the physical, emotional, and mental turbulence of adolescence. She also continues to point out how adolescents gets or feels when they have been neglected, judged, alienated, and pressured by the people around them. Therefore, she captures her audience attention by using tone and personification. Lorde starts out using personification to help her audience visualize while reading; for instance, Lorde states " my skin has betrayed me" (2), which shows her thoughts about the physical part of her adolescence. In addition to, she asked, " how come my knees are always so ashy" (6-7) giving the readers a visual image of her thoughts physically again. However, emotionally she felt neglected by her own mother; " and momma's in the bedroom with the door closed" (10-11) which obviously shows isolation. Lorde continues to express how adolescents tend to feel that they're being judged, " I have to learn how to dance in time for the party" (12-13), "I should have been on the Math Team my marks was better than his" (26-27), " why do I have to be the one wearing braces" (28-30); these stanzas tend to impose that the teenager wanted to fit in and wasn't even noticed. …show more content…
During adolescence, teens tend to feel judged, neglected, pressured, and discriminated. At these times, teenagers looks for adults to help them through hard times, but in this poem Lorde didn't have the comfort she needed from her mother. Reading this poem, it's so easy to visualize the things Lorde expresses because she was very vivid along with the tone and personification that she sat in
Each literary work portrays something different, leaving a unique impression on all who read that piece of writing. Some poems or stories make one feel happy, while others are more solemn. This has very much to do with what the author is talking about in his or her writing, leaving a bit of their heart and soul in the work. F. Scott Fitzgerald, when writing The Great Gatsby, wrote about the real world, yet he didn’t paint a rosy picture for the reader. The same can be said about T.S. Eliot, whose poem “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” presents his interpretation of hell. Both pieces of writing have many similarities, but the most similar of them all is the tone of each one.
The poem starts with the line, “This girlchild was born as usual,” which suggests that as soon as a girl is born, society already expects her to learn the role she will soon play in when she hits puberty (1). Thus, showing why we are given dolls as little girls to illustrate how we should act and appear according to society. After we learn all the roles we will soon take part in, “the magic of puberty,” hits and girls immediately begin applying the ideals to their own lives (5). As if this attempt to conform is not enough we have other people telling us we are not to perfect. “You have a great big nose and fat legs,” says a classmate to the girl (6). This type of pressure can slowly but surely destroy even the little confidence women do have in themselves.
But the ‘Nurses Song,’ form experience shows the reality of life: that it is hard, and people, like the nurse in the song aren’t happy and full of joy, like the memories of the old people in ‘The Echoing Green,’ and therefore, Blake’s poetry confirms the view that children are oppressed by
Thus, through further exploration of Lorde as a person, new insight is given to the poem “Coal”. The poem also inadvertently raises questions about other poems when upheld as an example for comparison to elucidate Lorde’s feelings about double-consciousness. This greater understanding and discourse on the subject of double-consciousness is vital to understanding the poem “Coal” because it is vital to the identity of Audre Lorde as a person. Since her writing is almost exclusively and scrutinizingly about herself, learning about the broader topics and events in Lorde’s life are intrinsic to the specific poem of “Coal”.
The fact that Lorde faces so many hardships throughout the novel, results in her inability to gain self-confidence and therefore integrate. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees Lorde as a loner; it is not until she meets women who influence her life that she begins to self-integrate. As a child, Lorde does not have many friends. She is isolated and feels that she is very different from those around her. She spends a lot of time with her mother, who she feels does not understand her, or allows her to meet a support network. Lorde's mother's isolation is one example of someone does not understand her lifestyle and therefore cannot giver her support. This is a form of discrimination, and one of the hardships that Audre faced her in adolescence and will continue to face for the rest of her life. It is not until see meets women that can relate to her life style that she feels she become a more complete person: "Recreating in words the women who helped give me substance" (255). As Lorde begins to meet friends an...
In our class discussions and reading, I learned that women were once in charge of the human race, women were a part of a community, no race was inferior or superior, there was peace and harmony in the world until the patriarchal era came, planning to embed itself in the ground for a long time. Women were raped of their identity, their race and their status in society. Men ruled the biblical stories, leaving Mary out. Hence, the war started between the races, women fought to gain their identity back and to do so, they started with writing. One of those women was Audre Lorde. Audre Lorde was raised in a very sheltered family. She was protected by her mother who believed that white people should not be trusted. Seeing her mother as an idol, she dared not to question her authority and obeyed her as she said. The pivotal point was when Lorde was on her own in college, it is then she fought racism and prejudice with writing and her involvement in the women community.
The story “The Fourth of July” by Audre Lorde demonstrates that she comes across a realization that she had to speak up for her rights and independence when she visited the capital city of the United States, Washington, D.C. Lorde explains how she was frustrated with the situation that occurred in Washington, D.C., which shows that she had learned the reality of the society. She writes about many things that she came across during the trip to Washington D.C. in the summer vacation. In the essay, the meanings of independence for Lorde are to fight for it and to speak up for the rights that they deserve. Lorde and her family visit many places in the capital city where they were told to leave the place because black people were not allowed there.
Poems have never been my favorite thing, however, the poems that I chose to analyze today were amazing. They had meaning that took me quite a while to understand, but in the end it all came together. Audre Lorde is a black, lesbian, published author, mother and self-proclaimed warrior.
This poem within the novel discusses the point in her life where she gains that freedom that every teenager wants. Torres used a great deal of description to allow the reader to envision and sense what the character felt as this poem progressed. An example of this is shown she is describing the delicious taste of cold pop running down the back of her throat; she says, “Then oh, sweet pop and hiss of the cap, the cold-bitter slap of Coke streaking the back of my throat” (“Freedom”, 20). What I personally enjoyed about this particular poem is how relatable it was to my when that was my age but also how as I continued to read the poem I began to smile. When she says, “Oh, to be eight, to fly home on a bike with your brother, belting out “Freedom” like Aretha in the Blues Brothers, arms raised to the heavens” (“Freedom”, 20). This pleasant feeling can be related to anyone that has been growing up and strives for that freedom that comes with age. It could be at any age, not only either years old, where people strive for the wonderful feeling of freedom that they’ve been dying to
Even though Lorde’s mother possibly thought in her heart that packing the picnic was the best way to conserve her family secure from food touched by the hands of strangers. Also it was a way to shelter her children from the racist situation that they could more likely encounter at the railroad dining car. In brief, the picnic preparation was an evidence of Lorde’s mother avoiding such repulsiveness at all expense. There were two reasons provided by Lorde for her incapability to comprehend with her parents’ reproach against white people. Henceforth, Lorde’s parents never really gave her any explanations or reasons; they just assumed she should to know without being told as seen in paragraph seven (7) the reason behind their caveats and the bases of their feelings concerning white people. Moreover, she has complications acknowledging such a decree from her mother as she narrated to
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
She strongly voiced her support for it with the slogan “Black is Beautiful” in the 1960s. Frantz Fanon’s notion of “Black Skin, White Mask,” has been largely portrayed in Una Marson’s poems, which influence the feelings and thinking of black women. . Even today Fanon’s observations are not outdated. In this poem too, just like in “An Introduction,” the mother persona perpetrates gender inequality and biases in order to save the child from any setbacks in her future life. This attitude leads to passing the same biases from mother to daughter and so on, thus depriving the young girl of experiencing the world on her own and forming an individual personal opinion, new visions and ideas therefore cannot be formed easily after such maternal training. In “Sweet Sixteen,”(see appendix for full poem; pg-xxiii) . Eunice De’Souza also portrays a near similar theme . The persona is a young woman who regrets her ignorance about her own body and its functions, because she has been instructed to be shy and coy as a part of her societal
Women aimed to prove they had purpose than just maintaining a figure. This poem’s content covers unrealistic expectations and a patriarchal society. Therefore, the topic of this poem fits perfectly well into social context. The social context of this work is society’s cultural pressure on girls. Our society objectifies women and determines their value based off of appearance, in turn, women are driven by these pressures to take drastic/destructive actions in order to live up to certain
Her tone in this song is at first mellow, but when she comes to the stanza of this song, she deliberately raises her voice to emphasize her genuine feelings. The tone describes her want and need for her thoughts to be truly heard. She wants the listener to capture her essence and the view of herself. In this specific stanza, she explains that s...
I did think it was going to be a story about her, so this defiantly was more interesting than I excepted. The main message I got from Lorde’s story and how this women struggled with being silent, is that being silent is going to protect you or help one come over their fears, instead people should over come this fear and speak up to whatever they need to speak up about, this to was seen as her main message in this text because later on, Lorde explains how she’s regret her decision in the past by being so silent, and how others will regret too if they don’t give this message more profound thought. So this was unique read because she was a black lesbian poet, which is incredible since the stigma in society around black people and sexual orientation. Relating this to this article, in today’s society I feel like many people stay silent because they are scared worrying about what people may say or think about them, especially being in the 20th century were everyone practically has some sort of profile on the internet, this makes it much easier for people to get targeted easily, while spreading their opinions out quickly. But after reading this article I realized that people including myself should speak up more often as other people may be struggling or needing the same help as you so you can be a helping hand for each other. Speaking up