Theme Of Metaphor By Maya Angelou

In this poem, Maya Angelou was able to express one particular poetic device which i was able to identify throughout the poem. Her use of metaphor was mentioned quite often in the poem. When Angelou said

“You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I 'll rise.”

Metaphor is a literary device which is often used in poems to give us a better understanding of how the author is feeling. Metaphor is a figure of speech which is often given to a object or action that cannot literally be done. When Maya Angelou says “ You may cut me with your eyes” this was a example of a type of metaphor because you cannot literally cut someone with your eyes. She is using this device

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise”

in the first line of this stanza when she says “ I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide” i believe whats she is trying to explain is that she feels powerful just like the ocean and she can surfaces the earth feeling capable of defeating all her difficulties. Her use of metaphor was expressed very effectively because it allows us to understand her pain and it also allows us to acknowledge why she is writing this poem. She does not want someones words to break us and wants us to understand that we are in charge of our own happiness.

Another poetic device i was able to identify in this poem was Maya Angelou’s use of a simile. Simile is a poetic device that gives us a comparison between one thing to another thing using words between lines such as “like and as.” Just as how i was able to recognize many metaphors in Angelou’s poem, i was also able to seek many different types of smilies. for example;

“Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful

I believe this is the theme because just by reading the title of her poem; “Still I Rise” i can tell its about a person who has faced many difficulties and has been ridiculed many times throughout her life and instead of giving up she decides to stay strong and continue to stand up even though the world is trying to push her down. Also another reason why i believe the theme of her poem is, “to never give up” because of her history. Maya Angelou is a Black- American who was born in the year of 1928. she has been discriminated throughout her life only being judged by the colour of her skin. Just as how Harriet Tubman was a black- Canadian who helped many slaves through the use of the underground railway as a escape path back to their native land, she has also suffered being discriminated by the use of words and in further cases, being abused. In that era African- American women were treated brutally and were always being pushed down and were not even treated like humans. They never got the respect they deserved and were treated like absolute disgrace just because of the colour of their skin. The theme of Maya Angelou’s poem is very significant because she was born during the generation where black people could not say what they wanted without others reacting with distraught and anger. Just by the title of the poem it tells us that no matter what difficulties we come across in our life we have to manage to stay strong and keep