I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, former colleague of Martin Luther King Jr., is a moving piece about black oppression in the South. It describes her young life, which she spent with her brother and grandmother. The story starts with a painful humiliation at Angelou's church, where she reveals that she hates her blackness, and though she cannot seem to properly verbalize it, she desires to be white. She then describes experiences in her grandmother's store. She gains an understanding of the struggle of being black in the South, seeing her neighbor's exhaustion, and their struggle to support their families. The painful reality is that virtually earned made enough to support their families, and they would never be able to escape the cycle of poverty that entrapped them. They always masked worry with hope in the mornings, but Angelou knew that they would always come back dejected and concerned. Everyone lived in fear of the Ku Klux Klan, and white people scared everyone, even the poorest of them seemed to have a stronghold on the blacks, no economic power could change that. The essay ends with Angelou's grandmother being humiliated by some white children, yet she achieves the impossible and rises above them, perhaps inspiring Angelou to become that powerful activist that she would become. The essay argues that in order for a person to overcome oppression, they must be morally superior to the oppressor to enact real change. When Angelou sees her grandmother once she overcomes her white oppressors, she describes her as angelic, a hyperbole to describe the woman's mental power to overcome. She uses descriptive language to convey that her oppressors are evil, yet her descriptions of them show that they are simple, and lack real power. She also uses narrative form to paint vignettes of the daily oppression that she, her family, and her friends faced. By showing her grandmother overcoming oppressors by ignoring and praying whilst they tormented her, Angelou proves her argument that to overcome tyranny, one must be morally superior to the oppressor.

(frashogard.com)

This is a picture of a plant defeating all odds and growing in a hostile environment, much like how Angelou suggests one should overcome adversity.

The Way to Rainy Mountain

The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a masterpiece about the life of Momaday's grandmother. She was of Kiowah descent, and was born in their peak as a nation. After her birth, they had a standoff with the US government, and were forced out of their home, and eventually moved to Rainy Mountain, a magnificent places that causes one to contemplate their existence. The people who lived there were profoundly devoted to their roots, living the culture every day. These people die, along with Aho, the grandmother. Their home was then largely abandoned; their children had left this home, and the culture left with them. These memories of the past defined Momaday's perceptions of the Kiowah, and left him with good memories about his ancestors. In the end, Momaday reflects on the Rainy Mountain. Without his grandmother and her friends, Rainy Mountain is a desolate and sad place, somewhere that is no longer the Kiowah home, as it no longer held the people that defined it. He leaves it with little regret and sadness, as it no longer houses his people. The author wrote this for anyone who believes that location defines where someone's home is. He believes that home is where one's family and friends is. Without them, home is just a place, with no joy or memories. The author used vivid description throughout the story in order to paint a picture of the joy felt when Rainy Mountain was full of people. In the end, the author did prove his point, because as more and more people left Rainy Mountain, it became a less friendly and lovely place, until it just became a location with no meaning at all. This proved that what defines a home is the people in it, not the location.

(barrywinbolt.com)

I chose an image of birds flying away because it represents how people left Rainy mountain, and brought its joys with them.

A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails

A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails by Donald Hall, former professor at Stanford University and the University of Michigan, is about a cousin from Hall's boyhood in New Hampshire named Washington Woodward. It is about the life of a strange man with a very robust work ethic and a simple outlook on life. He tirelessly worked for low wages, and was content with his basic way of life. His upbringing was abnormal, as he was separated from his siblings, and his father was lazy and mean. In life he was never able to find romance, thus he never had a family. He was rarely visited by others, so when they did visit, he could speak for an eternity. In the end of the story he died in a state nursing home utterly alone. The author was showing that though this man was content with his life, it had no meaning, and nothing of importance occurred. He left nothing significant after he died, as he chose to pursue trivial interests instead of doing anything with meaning, like collecting a hundred thousand straightened nails. In the text, Hall was trying to prove to all people that life can be wasted, and showed it through Washington's lonely and meaningless life. Washington was an excellent worker, yet all the work that he did rotted away, and his physical works decomposed to show insignificance. The author used hyperbole when explaining Washington's legacy, saying he left things like one hundred thousand nails instead of lasting intangible things. Other than that, little rhetoric had to be used, Washington's life story was enough to prove that it had no meaning, and was scary enough to the readers to remind them that they must leave something more than works to the world in order to have a lasting legacy.

(Image sourced from MSN)

This image was chosen because it represents Washington's legacy. Like the house, his legacy is rotting away.