Graduation Maya Angelou Response

Summary Response Essay: “Graduation”
Narrated in the first person “Graduation” is Maya Angelou’s account of her eighth grade graduation and how reality doesn’t always meet expectations. Using allegory, allusion and changes in tone, Angelou builds her story, giving the reader a sense of the excitement and anticipation she felt, inequalities in gender and racial prejudices of that time, and how those inequalities and prejudices encroached upon her graduation, ruining her expectations and leaving her feeling defeated. Furthermore, Angelou gives the reader a feeling of her defeatist attitude and how, (through one person standing up proud and strong), she was able to gain personal insight and hope for a better future. In the beginning of Angelou’s
“The windows seemed cold and unfriendly from the lower hill. A sense of ill-fated timing crept over me.” She goes on to describe the rushed feeling of the beginning ceremonies of the graduation and portrays to the reader her feeling of worse things to come. In this way she starts to build a sense of foreboding in the reader. The ceremony starts out with Angelou describing the beginning ceremonies, how her principal seemed rather desperate, and how things were not going as planned. Angelou states that she had a presentiment of worse things to come and that something unplanned and unrehearsed was about to happen. She states that the invocation was brief and punchy and then describes the principals opening speech about Booker T. Washington saying we can be as close as fingers on the hand (reiterating the sense of strength and community of her people as a unit). Angelou goes on to describe the anger and humiliation she felt after her people were belittled in a speech by Mr. Edward Donleavy. She states that Mr. Donleavy’s speech fell on deaf ears and that for her the accomplishment of graduation meant nothing. Angelou conveys her anger further by saying “We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to be was farcical and presumptuous.” Angelou continues to describe her anger by conveying to the reader such things as how the song
In her own words Angelou states that she had sung the song a thousand times but until that moment had never actually heard the words. In singing this song Henry was able to portray a sense of strength and pride to the crowd. In the end Angelou states “We were back on top again. As always, again. We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls. I was no longer simply a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race”. In so doing Angelou underscores not only the strength and pride of her people, but also her own personal strengths and the ability to never back