Monday, March 30, 2015

TPCASST POETRY ANALYSIS: WOMAN WORK BY MAYA ANGELOU

Title: The title of the poem is actually very self-explanatory! The poem is about all the responsibilities of a woman, no matter what the nationality and what era she belonged to.

Paraphrase: The first stanza of the poem, the author basically lists all the chores that a woman has to complete everyday. In the later stanzas, the author focuses more on the natural beauty of the world and a woman relying on the nature to make her feel beautiful and calm.

Connotation: Some of the author's diction that stood out to me was her use of 'sun,' 'rain,' 'wind,' 'stars,' 'moon,' etc. All these have a certain connotation to it: power, destruction, royalty, beauty, etc. I like how the author uses the beauty and innocence of nature to resemble the beauty and innocence of women.

Attitude: Through the shift of tone of the author from straightforward in the first stanza to more soothing and hopeful in the next couple stanzas proves how the author wasn't focusing on highlighting the monotonous life of a woman (although it certainly seems so in the first stanza). In fact, the author, according to me, was proving how it depends on one;s perspective to find the optimism in one's own life. Instead of complaining about how many responsibilities a typical woman has, she asks nature to make her feel free ("Let me float across the sky"), calm ("And cool my brow again"), loved and appreciated ("cold icy kisses and/Let me rest tonight"), and accepted ("You're all that I can call my own"). The author was attempting to influence the readers by sharing how a woman only seeks basic needs and abstract "materials" in return of all her hard work but is unable to get it from her loved ones and so satisfies herself by gaining it from nature.

Shift: There is one shift in the poem and I addressed it more in depth in the attitude section but briefly, it is right after the first stanza - when the author shifts from listing a woman's duties to her expectations in return.

Title revisited: The only thing that stood out to me about the title after the analysis was how the title was talking not only about the physical work that a woman does but also the "work" that she performs to gain the emotions and abstract things that she rightfully deserves.

Theme: I think the theme of the poem, for me - personally, was to reward yourself for your own work, regardless of whether others addresses or acknowledges it or not.

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