Society Versus the Individual in Gather Together in My Name
"I reassured myself. I was helping my man. And, after all, there was nothing wrong with sex. I had no need for shame. Society dictated that sex was only licensed by marriage documents. Well, I didn't agree with that. Society is a conglomerate of human beings and that's just what I was. A human being." What we have here from Maya Angelou's novel, Gather Together in My Name, is the basic battle of society against the individual. Who wins? Well, according to Angelou, the answer is no one wins because everyone loses. It is this particular theme that needs to be addressed the most for two reasons. One is that Maya Angelou is one of the first black females to write about the "Ritas" of the world. The second, which is the one under investigation in this essay, is in reference to John Oliver Killens' criticism, "This is the story of a great heroine who knows the meaning of a struggle and never loses her pride or dignity. Indeed, her story makes me proud of the human race."
"I had no idea what I was going to make of my life, but I had given a promise and found my innocence. I swore I'd never lose it again." Those words spoken by Rita at the end of the novel seem to support Killens' appraisal. However, while an eighteen-year-old mother, who has had numerous failures and even a greater number of affairs, may know "the meaning of a struggle" quite well, it is not so that she never loses her pride or dignity. In fact, it is doubtful as to whether or not, even by the stories end, she has yet found it. One may argue that she found her pride and dignity after she stopped smoking pot or after she stopped prostituting or after (about the fifth time) she promised herself she would get her life together. Unfortunately, none of these are valid, for Rita did not actually discontinue the use of pot, she just ran out. Rita sleeps with a drug addict named Troubadour Martin for the security she thought she would receive from him.
An article discussing the importance of a mission statement states that a mission statements’ job is to outline the organization’s unique purpose and establish the basis of its values and traits, as well as describe the attitude that is to be expected of those a part of the organization. Furthermore, this philosophical foundation sets the “tone” for physical actions, meaning that the content of the mission statement can determine the behavior of personnel (Hitt & Ireland, 1992).
This literary critique was found on the Bryant Library database. It talks about how well Maya conveys her message to her readers as well as portraying vivid scenes in her reader’s minds’. Maya’s sense of story and her passionate desire to overcome obstacles and strive for greatness and self-appreciation is what makes Maya an outlier. Living in America, Angelou believed that African American as a whole must find emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sustenance through reverting back to their “home” of Africa. According to Maya, “Home” was the best place to capture a sense of family, past, and tradition. When it comes to Maya’s works of literature, her novels seems to be more critically acclaimed then her poetry. With that being said, Angelou pursues harsh social and political issues involving African American in her poems. Some of these themes are the struggle for civil rights in America and Africa, the feminist movement, Maya’s relationship with her son, and her awareness of the difficulties of living in America's struggling classes. Nevertheless, in all of Maya’s works of literature she is able to “harness the power of the word” through an extraordinary understanding of the language and events she uses and went through. Reading this critique made me have a better understanding of the process Maya went through in order to illustrate her life to her readers. It was not just sitting down with a pen and paper and just writing thoughts down. It was really, Maya being able to perfect something that she c...
Maya Angelou lived through a time where she was discriminated against for not only her race but also her gender. In her poem “Still I Rise” Angelou sarcastically talks about how no matter what is thrown at her she will rise above it and she will do it with resilience and confidence. Her poem discusses racism and sexism and gives minorities and women a sense of hope to overcome and endure both of those things. Angelou’s self-assurance in the poem makes you believe that you too can overcome whatever obstacle. Although this poem was intended for blacks, and women, and specifically black women, the poem helps build up strong and courageous people no matter what race or gender you are. Maya Angelou in “Still I Rise” uses both pathos and ethos to
Maya Angelou’s “Equality” depicts a more patient yet tenacious rebel than described in Dunbar’s poem. “You declare you see me dimly”, she begins, “through a glass that will not shine.” Maya describes the denial of her boldness, of her rebellion; but, she continues to march, chanting “Equality and I will be free. Equality and I will be free.” She identifies herself as a shadow, unimportant to those she opposes— but she intends to repeat the mantra “Equality and I will be free” until she is heard. The sixth stanza left me in literal tears (and I am not an emotional person, thank you very
...’s cabinet members. Taft then chose his own cabinet members after having promised to keep Roosevelt’s. Also the Secretary of Interior, Ballinger, wanted to stop conservation, but is almost stopped by Gifford Pinchot who was loyal to Roosevelt and was head of the National Commission for the Conservation of Natural Resources. Pinchot challenges Ballinger and is ultimately fired by President Taft. Roosevelt becomes furious and decides to run again in the 1912 elections after having promised to never run again. Roosevelt and Taft both ultimately lose to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Maya Angelou was one of America’s greatest writers in history. She was known for her many writings and for her part in Civil Rights Movements. Maya Angelou went through many hardships during her childhood, the most prevalent of those, racism over her skin color. This racism affected where she grew up, where she went to school, even where she got a job. “My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drops s’s from plurals and suffixes from past tense verbs.” (Angelou 221) Maya Angelou was a strong believer in a good education and many of those beliefs were described in her
In the perspective as an African American woman, Maya Angelou speaks of the issue of sexism in her poem. In this quote, “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies…”, Angelou sheds light on the problems women faced during her time. Many had to also face the discrimination from men as men control them and put words in women’s mouths. This indicates the doubled amount of burden that African American women had to go through and it was important for Maya Angelou to speak of this issue through literature and give a voice to women who were struggling with the same conflicting situations. In contrast, Hughes’s, “I, Too,” poem states the African American inequality more generally than Angelou’s
De la Cruz does not let women out of the blame. However, she does not focus the blame on them voicing, “Who has embraced the greater blame in passion? She who, solicited, falls, or he who, fallen, pleads?” She poses this question to make you ponder who is really at fault. As De la Cruz points out, the suppression of women is not all the men’s fault, but neither is it all the woman’s fault, making it hard to see who is more at fault. De la Cruz poses the ultimatum of, “Who is more to blame though either should do wrong? She who sins for pay or he who pays to sin?” This question is possibly one of the most important quotes in the whole poem as the quote really shows all sides take fault. If both the male mentality and female mentality are at fault, then the basis, human nature, must be at
Therapeutic relationship is an essential part of nursing; it is the foundation of nursing (CNO, 2009). The National Competency Standard for Registered Nurses state that nurses are responsible for “establishing, sustaining and concluding professional relationship with individuals/groups.” Throughout this essay the importance of forming a therapeutic relationships will be explained. The process of building a therapeutic relationship begins from prior to time of contact with a patient, the interpersonal skills of the nurse; then the process includes skills required by the nurse to communicate effectively, including respect, trust, non-judgment and empathy. The way to portray these skills can be via verbal or non-verbal cues that are important to understand how they influence a person. The process and skills listed below are all relevant to nurses working in the contemporary hospital environment today.
... have been doing a phenomenal job of figuring this out. DNA is the chemical in each cell that carries our genes. DNA is the source of just about everything. It not only determines what we look like, but also many other things. Instructions are on some of our genes to let them know when they need to multiply and divide. Cancers can be caused by DNA defects.
Walker, Pierre A. (October 1995). "Racial protest, identity, words, and form in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". College Literature 22 (3): 91–108. Retrieved February 17 from http://web.archive.org/web/20080401071226/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_199510/ai_n8723217
Both of these lady’s appeal in their writing, but during the time they wrote their piece they
http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing practice/ clinical zone/ educators/ good communication help to build a therapeutic relationship/ 5003004 article. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
In her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is about a young Maya Angelou who finds the strength to say “I can” in a world built on the oppression and suffering of her ancestors (Moore 49). Motherhood is a continuing theme throughout nearly all of Angelou’s biographies as well as the reclaim of her body and sexuality (Lupton 159). In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings angelou shows a clear progression “from rage and indignation to subtle resistance to active protest” in order to not only give it a thematic unity but also to “contrast the otherwise episodic quality of the narrative” (Walker 80). In order for a woman to write of her own rape she must first overcome both the racism and sexism she will encounter and take her body back as her own rather than an oversexualised object (Vermillion
How media literacy is defined is important for it exerts influence on the framing of the debate, the research agenda and policy initiatives (Livingstone, 2004). However, its concept has always been controversial (Luke, 1989). The definition of media literacy first appear in the 1992 National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy, which described it as: “The ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages” (Rubin, 1998, p.3). Based on this definition, many researchers are putting efforts to redefine it from different aspects. Some definitions of the last decade involved the understanding of how media functioned in society (Messaris, 1998). Others pointed out that media literacy instead depended on the understanding of the technological, political, economic constraints affecting the transmission of mediated messages (Lewis and Jhally, 1998). According to Tyner (1998, p17), definitions range from the tautological (computer literacy is the ability to use computers) to the hugely idealistic: “The term literacy is shorthand for cultural ideals as eclectic as economic development, personal fulfillment, and individual moral fortitude”. One of the definition that is more related to daily practice puts emphasis on critical thinking and the ability to distinguish media content form social reality, as Potter (2001, pp4-5) put it: “Media literacy is a perspective that we actively use when exposing ourselves to the media in order to interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter.” While popular US textbooks on media literacy have an interesting description, which says, “we build our perspectives from knowledge structures; to build our knowledge structures, we need tools and raw materials-the...