The Life of Tupac Shakur

Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on June 16, 1971. Named after an Inca Chief, Tupac Amaru means “Shining Serpent” referring to wisdom and courage and Shakur meaning “thankful to God”. Shakurs mother, Afeni Shakur, was a leading member of the Black Panthers, a radical wing of the civil rights movement, with support for hardcore ghettos as well as white patronage. When Tupac’s mother was pregnant with Tupac she was spending time in the Woman’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village for conspiring to bomb several public places in New York City. All growing up his family lived in homeless shelters and run down town houses. Many times his family could not even afford lighting in the house. The only fond member he ever told of his childhood was of a diary he kept. In this diary he recorded his first attempts at poetry, this is where it began. A big moment in Tupac’s intellectual life occurred when he was twelve. At the age of twelve his mother enrolled him in 127th Street Ensemble, a theater group in Harlem. Even at an early age his mothers political views where confusing, and intriguing him. As he told the January issue of VIBE magazine in 1994, “ She was trying to make me live in the white picket fence lifestyle, but yet we ain’t got no money and no good food and no lights. You want me to go to school? They tellin me all this stuff about fighting the system but they pushin me in the system.” Meanwhile Tupac’s father was serving time in prison, when released Tupac and his mother had moved to Baltimore. Before Afeni Shakur could contact him, he had died of a crack induced hart attack.

While in Baltimore, Tupac auditioned for, and was accepted into, the Baltimore School of Arts. This success gave Tupac a goal and ambition. It also exposed him to white people who cared about his life. However, before Tupac could finish high school at this school of arts, his family moved to Marin City, California.. Because of this move, Tupac never did finish highschool. Marin City, at the time, was nicknamed “the jungle” because it was mainly project housing and had high crime rates.

This is the point in Tupacs life where he claimed he “got off track”. Tupac began selling crack to all the ghetto inhabitants and was soon thrown out of his house. During this time, however, he did receive a positive brake, he was hired as a roadie/dancer for the hip-hop group Digital U...

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...f all his problems are “knawing at my sanity” as if it where a rat or other animal.

Hyperbole is an exaggeration, when something is embellished. Hyperbole is also used. At one point Tupac says that the children are “bred with ruthlessness” This exaggeration makes it sound like they are bred for certain traits, like animals, bred to be hartless and without feelings. This is an obvious exaggeration as that no person is actually bred to be without feelings.

The final piece of figurative language is irony. Irony is almost a sort of mockery, or a satire. What I mean is, for example, if a person feared flying all their life, but finally decided to fly, and died in a plane crash. Irony in this poem is when he writes “scared of being outcast , afraid of common fate.” In this he says that people are afraid of being different than everybody, yet they also scared of being the same as everyone. This is irony.

Theme

The theme of this poem is that although things may be bad , if you keep your head up, and fight everyday for what you believe in, then you can achieve and make the future better. You must leave the past behind you, and you will achieve what you want in the future.