Maya Angelou's Still I Rise

238 Words1 Pages
In “Still I Rise,” Maya Angelou describes the shift from her past to her present life, creating a confident, passionate, and hopeful speaker in order to suggest to the reader that self-respect, confidence, and a strong will allow oneself to overcome the difficulties in life. The image of her past, with a “bowed head and lowered eyes,” along with falling shoulders “weakened by soulful cries,” compared to her shift to the present, “leaving behind nights of terror and fear” to “a daybreak that’s wondrously clear” conveys a strong sense of uplifting and great passion because the reader can see that the author utilizes a set of powerful words and phrases to convey her arduous journey in turning her distressing early life into one that was more