The graduation

Being my first reading of Maya Angelou, I was interested to see her perspective of the racial issues she faced and bore witness to.

Her change of narration after the first few paragraphs was not something Ive been accustomed to. But by starting her piece in third person, it allowed to reader to grasp an overall feeling of what was going on in town and how much that event meant to everyone.

It seemed that for the narrator, that moment of being handed her diploma was going to be pivotal in her life; from there she would be a changed and matured woman with a world of possibilities open to her. However, after hearing the message, A complete 180 degree change was seen in the her. I thought one of the saddest images was how the narrator "... had to be nudged to go and receive [her] diploma." How tragic! Coming from the same woman that imagined with great anticipation "...the chance to walk up the stairs in the auditorium and gracefully receive [her] hard earned diploma." Unarguably, the speaker had drained every ounce of hope in this young graduate.

Despite the negative connotations of the speech, when the crowd heard the words to some familiar songs, they recognized how far they as a race had come, and as a result, their spirits were lifted and they were encouraged once again to reach for their dreams.

I thought it was important that the graduates faced this difficulty. Had the ceremony gone by seamlessly as expected, it wouldnt have as much of a deep rooted meaning to the people. It was vital that they realized the hardships they have already, and will still have to face as a people. Every time a group is knocked down, they seem to rise only stronger, and it seems this is the case with the group that Angelou writes of.