Giovanni Austin-Moorhouse 10MD
‘Describe how techniques have been used in the text. Explain how these techniques have been used to create a particular effect.’
Ballad of Birmingham & Still I Rise.
The poems Ballad of Birmingham and Still I Rise by Dudley Randall and Maya Angelou depict the trials and hardships of growing up as an African-American woman in the 1900s during the era of very harsh racism on black people. Also, they display the difference in perspective between the two poems; one ending in mourning and the other with hope and power. Some fundamental techniques included in the poem create a particular effect on the reader. The ones that have had the most significant impact on me are poetic comparison, historical references, violent verbs, direct address, and rhetorical questions. These writing techniques helped me to understand where the author was coming from and how they wanted to convey their perspective.
The usage of poetic comparison in Still I Rise and Ballad of Birmingham conveys the effect of significant achievement in the face of near-impossible odds. For example, in Still I Rise, Maya Angelou was ‘trod into the very dirt,’ but then she says, ‘but still like dust I’ll rise. The trodding in this quote is a violent expression of cutting out Maya Angelou’s feelings and opinions, and the dirt represents the lowest place in society. The dust is a reference back to the soil, which she rises back out of that challenging situation.
That changes, though because, in the next few stanzas, Maya Angelou seems to have gained massive amounts of prominence and material wealth. She said ‘I walk like I’ve got oil wells pumping in my living room,’ which is telling the reader that Maya Angelou has become wealthy in one way or another because oil is precious and now quite rare, so oil wells are places that are often sought after and attacked. These two qualities link to her previous and present. ‘I laugh like I’ve got gold mines diggin’ in my own backyard,’ is another perfect example of how Maya Angelou is getting back at the white oppressors. The most important of the three quotes of the three I have mentioned is, ‘I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs’ because this is telling the reader that Maya Angelou had control over her sexuality. That was unheard of for an African-American woman because black people were often slaves which meant that the slave owner had the power over who she married if she could have children. Also, often the slave owner was the father of most children that African-American women bore. A set of three very creative metaphors portray the impossible odds that she was used to facing. Maya Angelou said that ‘you may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still like air, I’ll rise.’ The use of repetition followed by three very violent metaphors show us as readers how hard it was for Maya Angelou to live in America in the 1900s. The use of these techniques has the reader left with a cheerful glow and some faith in humanity, but it is also human to feel sad for somebody who has had to experience these trials. We can relate a little bit to Maya Angelou here in New Zealand with the land issues that Maori faced earlier this year. In the 1800s, 10 per cent of New Zealand land was for Maori. The British authorities failed to live up to this promise, and now the Maori tribes were striking back. That is because a building company called Fletcher Building purchased a Maori Village of land three kilometres north of Auckland called Ihumātao, and this land was for apartments. Maori tribes protested, and the government returned the property to Maori 160 years later than it was supposed to be. We can call this racism because the British knew that the Maori were primitive and wouldn’t understand that they were the deals that they made to deceive them.
On the other hand, poetic comparisons can also display concern. For example, in the Ballad of Birmingham, the mother depicted is expressing her concern for her child when she says, ‘the dogs are fierce and wild, and clubs and hoses, guns and jails aren’t good for a little child.’ Here the dogs are a metaphorical comparison to police and hate groups against the freedom marches that the daughter in this poem wanted to participate in and they are fierce and wild just like a rabid dog would be if you got on the wrong side of it. Also, the weapons used against the marchers could very well kill them, which would devastate any parent, but especially this parent. That is because as we read the entirety of Ballad of Birmingham, we see that all of the mother’s joy is stored in her child, which was both literally and figuratively blown apart. The cause of this is the event on which the basis of the writing of the poem; the bombing 16th Street, Baptist Church bombing in 1963 where four girls died, (one of which was only eleven; the others were all fourteen). ‘For I fear those guns will fire ’ is another example of motherly concern in the poem. That quote links back to the first quote because they both mention guns, but the second quote is going a step further by telling the daughter that she is afraid that a mob or the police might kill her. A simile that reveals sadness in Still I Rise is ‘Shoulders falling down like teardrops.’ This quote is showing that white people back then liked to belittle black people and that Maya Angelou was so downcast that her shoulders were falling or slumping down. I believe that she chose teardrops as a comparison to show the sadness that she was displaying at the time of these horrible actions. These techniques have been used negatively and have created the opposite effect on the reader of the usage of poetic comparisons used in Still I Rise. We feel sad for the black people who are just trying their absolute hardest to get equality back into their lives. We can’t link this to our everyday lives in New Zealand. But we can see the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests happening in America, and four police officers killed a man named George Floyd, who was one of the black protesters. These protests have been happening for years, but they have been getting more and more violent, which is understandable because they have been getting nowhere, so they are trying to be heard by humanity.
The usage of direct address and rhetorical questions accuse the listener and to make them part of the conversation. They portray two different feelings. A positive example is found in Still I Rise, where Maya Angelou uses sets of two lines to ask the reader a rhetorical question, and then make them part of the conversation. The first time she does this is in the second stanza where she says, ‘Does my sassiness upset you?’ That engages the reader, and then the following line, ‘Why are you beset with gloom?’ The sassiness in the quote is saying that Maya Angelou has gained prominence and that she is going to be arrogant about it and that her oppressors have no power over her. The gloom in the quote is the disappointment and failure from Maya Angelou’s oppressors because they had failed to make her the scum of society, but now she has risen and now looking down onto them. These two rhetorical questions engage the reader twice, which makes them read on and makes them part of the conversation. An arrogant effect is created with the use of positive rhetorical questions and direct addresses. There is no link to the real world today because we don’t see black people as slaves; their opinion is ignored. Also, being a black person at all doesn’t seem like a very positive thing because of us white people; we ruin life’s enjoyable qualities, and it’s not fair.
On the other hand, a negative example of a rhetorical question has occurred in Ballad of Birmingham. For instance, at the end of the poem, the mother is found ‘clawing’ through the debris from the bombing desperately for her child, and then she finds a shoe that her daughter wore, and then she asks, ‘O here’s the shoe my baby wore, but, baby where are you?’ That is a rhetorical question because she is talking to something dead which cannot respond, so it is now aimed straight at the reader. Also, it can’t be answered because the daughter is most likely in more places than one if her cause of death was from the bomb that obliterated the church she was singing in the children’s choir at the time. A negative example of a rhetorical question also in the third stanza of Still I Rise where Maya Angelou says, ‘Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?’ That quote is telling the reader that Maya Angelou obeyed the orders given to her because if she didn’t, her life would be in danger. It also is directly accusing the oppressors, which makes the reader a bystander instead of being part of the conversation. The effect that is created makes us feel sad for both the mother in Ballad of Birmingham and Maya Angelou in Still I Rise. Again, there isn’t a link to the real world as we don’t see black persons being forced to look away from white people; they are even allowed to marry white people, so it is so much more enjoyable for black people than back in the 1900s, but still, they are taken for granted, just like the simple things are life are. For example, if all of the spiders in the world disappeared, nobody would notice. Not until the other insect population got out of control would we realise that something vital has disappeared from the earth.
Historical references and violent verbs are used to create the feeling of a harsh and difficult past and present. For example, in Ballad of Birmingham, we can see that Dudley Randall is reminding us of the desperation that the mother had when she heard the deafening explosion that would’ve torn her very core to pieces. He illustrates this in the final stanza with the words, ‘She clawed through the bits of glass and brick.’ The violent verb clawed shows how desperate the mother was to find her daughter who was less than fifteen years of age at the time of the bombing. We can feel distressed and anxious at times because the world puts so much pressure on our generation to pursue our careers just to have more money than others. Having money can also be a burden though because we can never be truly happy without a real purpose in life that means something to us. After all, otherwise, there is no point in being alive which is the cause of a lot of the suicide in New Zealand because as are one of the leading countries, the education system puts a lot of pressure on us as the younger generation to pursue our goals and to get the very best, but that puts a lot of stress on us. On the other hand, the parents of the children that are my age often think that freedom is the best for us and that we need to learn from our mistakes, but I believe that we don’t need to make the mistake if we know why before we think about trying it. Unfortunately, a lot of people give in to peer pressure which leads people to make very harmful decisions that can either lead to, guilt, depression, or much worse. The overall effect that this creates is sorrow and sadness because of how severely humans have failed to create equality back then to now.
In conclusion, the poems Still I Rise, and Ballad of Birmingham by Maya Angelou and Dudley Randall use poetic comparison, rhetorical questions, direct address, violent verbs, and historical references in a way that I feel describes the emotions going through the authors’ heads. They also create a particular effect on the listener, whether positive or negative. These two poems display excellent use of various techniques to show how shocking racism was when they were written.
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