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Introduction

In my essay I will be comparing the two poems "nothings changed" by Tatamkhulu Afrika and "still I'll rise" by Maya Angelou. My main aim in this essay is to discover how the two poets describe and express their feelings. I will do this by focusing on their use of linguistic techniques and what effect this has given on the reader. Moreover, I will concentrated one how the poets have structured the poem, by carefully analyzing it. Maya Angelou Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voice of our time. She has many titles such as memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. She was born on the 4th April 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 26 Angelou studied modern dance and poetry; however her studies did not stop there. She traveled to Cairo, Ghana, New York and in this time she had mastered French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and Fanti. In 1993 she composed a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration; it was watched live on air all around the world. Stanza 1 "You may write me down in history, with your bitter twisted lies you may trod me in very dirt but still like dust ill rise" in his opening verse of the poem, the reader automatically senses Maya's attitude towards the reader and I felt as though she was spearing the reader with these words by saying "your bitter" by doing this I thought that if made the reader feel as though they had done all this to Maya, therefore it made the reader feel emotional. Maya Angelo wrote at the start of her poem "Your bitter twisted lies" in this quotation Angelou is presenting her feelings by harshly saying that you can do whatever you want with you bitter twisted lies. The word "twisted" shows the reader how untrue these lies are and how hurtful, and unpleasant, these lies are to her. ...read more.

Middle

blacks to have rights, for blacks to have their freedom, for blacks to unveil they're gifts that they all have, and for them to live up to high expectations, and by saying "I rise, I rise, I rise" shows that she has done this and succeeded and know she has changed the life of all black people In the world. I realized that towards the end of the poem instead of using anger to convey the message instead Maya used emotion, and hope, and by doing this it really made the reader believe that whatever happens in the world Maya will always rise above it. Now I am going to give a brief summary on the life of Tatamkhulu Afrika. Born in 1920, Afrika was born and bought up in Cape Town, South Africa; he had an Arab father and a Turkish mother. In Africa people were classed according to the color of their skin, However Afrika turned down the chance to be classed as white as he chose to become Muslim which in that time was categorized as colored. Later on in his years he joined the African national congress and but 3 years he was arrested for terrorism and was banned writing or speaking in public for 5 years. He died shortly after his 82nd birthday; he was run over by a bus just 2 weeks after the publication of his final novel "bitter Eden" he left a number of unpublished works, poems, plays, and novels. I will start now by analyzing the first stanza. In the first few lines of the first stanza, he renders an image of district six and mentions some of its characteristics here I will give a few examples, "Small round hard stones click under my heels. In the first quotation he talks about that in district six, the governments haven't taken much care to build roads, and this leads me to think, that it would be very rare to see any modern means of transport. ...read more.

Conclusion

One example of this was "I press my nose to clear the panes, know before I see them there will be crushed ice white glass, linen falls, the single rose" he shows the luxury and the quality that whites have been given, and the contrasts this with "down the road working mans caf� sells bunny chows, take it with you, eat it at a plastic tables top, wipe your fingers on your jeans, spit a little on the floor: its in the bone" he shows the difference in luxury between a white and blacks caf� and because he did this I thought that it was very effective and created emotion and made the reader feel sorry for blacks. On the other hand I thought that if Maya did this her poem would have been a little more effective. One more thing that I spotted was that both writers ended their poem differently. These surprised me because they were both black and were fighting the same problem. Maya Angelou ended her poem with "I am the dream and hope of the slave, I rise, I rise, I rise" she showed a sense of achievement and hope, because by saying "I rise" three times showed the reader that she has her accomplished her mission of rising and ending above discrimination. On the other hand Tatamkhulu ended his in anger and irritation by saying "hands burn for a stone, a bomb to shiver down the glass, nothings changed". Here he showed anger however their was a sense of hope, but by writing this, it told the reader that their was still discrimination between whites and blacks, But this made the reader feel emotional whereas Maya's was more a feel of accomplishment. To summarize, I thought that the two poems where exceptional, however, I enjoyed Maya Angelou's most. This was because she blamed the reader and by doing this it made the reader feel emotional. Although "nothing's changed" was exceptional I still thought that Maya's was slightly better. ?? ?? ?? ?? - 1 - ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Comparing poems section.