Woman Work By Maya Angelou - Free Essay Example

Summary Woman Work by Maya Angelou is about a womans chores and jobs throughout the day. The poem relates to Maya and her life as a young single mother. The first stanza begins with a list of the chores. The list is written in a fast pace and overwhelming sense of busyness and stress. The first stanza shows that the speaker and her family are poor and do not own much. The second, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas slow down to show a resting period in the womans day. The woman shows that nature is important to her because it is the only thing that she owns. Nature is the only thing in her life that does not add any stress and is an outlet for her busy day. Speaker The speaker of the poem is hardworking and probably a single mother. The woman in the poem is most likely African-American because Maya Angelou is African-American. Readers also know that she is poor because she mentions her hut, the manual labor that she is forced to do, and that nature is the only thing she owns. Sound Devices One type of sound device used in the poem is consonance. The first stanza has hard consonance sounds like the T sound in gotta, tots and cotton, the hard G sound in garden, and the hard C sound in clothes, company, cane, and cotton. In contrast, the following stanzas have fewer hard consonance sounds and more soft consonances. The recognizable examples are the soft S sound in shine, softly, storm, sky, and rest, and the soft F sound in fall, float, fiercest, snowflakes, and leaf. Woman Work Marguerite Ann Johnson Angelou (who goes by Maya) is known as an actress, historian, educator, civil-rights activist, author, and poet. She was born on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri but was raised in Stamps, Arkansas. At 14 years old, she became San Franciscos first African-American female cable car conductor. A few weeks after her high-school graduation at age 17, she gave birth to her first son, Guy. She raised her son as a single mother for almost 10 years before she married Tosh Angelos. Setting The setting of the poem is the South. The first clue to the setting is the chicken to fry. Fried chicken is a popular dish more common in the South. The next clue to the setting is the cane to be cut. Cane refers to sugar cane, which can only be grown in hot climates like the southern United States. The last clue to the setting is the cotton to pick. Cotton, like sugar cane, can only be grown in warmer climates. These tell readers that the setting is definitely a state in the South. Tone The tone of the first stanza is tense and depressing. The woman is given a list of chores to do which tire her out and create more stress in her life. The tone of the second, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas is grateful and content. The woman does not have much, but she is grateful for nature and is content with it. The difference in tone is emphasized through the difference in consonance that Maya Angelou uses as a sound device. Verse Form The first stanzas verse form is rhymed verse in the form AABB and so on for 14 lines. This verse form makes each line very quick and hurried. This adds a tedious rush to the first stanza to emphasize the amount work a the woman has to do throughout the day. The last stanzas are free verse, which makes the tempo of the poem decrease dramatically. This calms down the overwhelmed readers and give them peace, just like the woman in the poem experiences after her long day of woman work. Authors Purpose Maya Angelous purpose for writing the poem Woman Work is to show a womans struggles and to express her pain as a single mother. The poem gives everyone a look into a womans day that is filled with hard work and stress. Description of Other Characters The only human characters in this poem are the speaker and her children, who are only mentioned three times. The other character is nature, which is not human. Nature is personified as a human being who calms the speaker and lets her rest and rejuvenate for her next day. Other Poetic Element of the Poem: Iambic Foot An example of a poetic element in this poem is iambic foot. Iambic foot is when the emphasis is placed on the second syllable instead of the first. Most of the first stanza is written in iambic foot, including lines The floor to mop and The tots to dress. Diction and Jargon Diction consists of both vocabulary and syntax. In this poem, the vocabulary is straightforward. However, the syntax is a little more complicated. Most people would say that they need to mop the floor, while the woman says she has the floor to mop. The speaker does not use any jargon in this poem. Theme The theme of this poem is work and loneliness. Work is shown through the chores and daily jobs the speaker does in the first stanza. Work causes the woman stress. Loneliness is the other theme in this poem. The speaker mentions her children three times, but never brings up any husband, which is the reason for her loneliness. The womans loneliness digs a hole inside her soul, but she fills it with her work and nature. Sense Devices Imagery Many examples of imagery can be found in this poem. The first example of imagery is in the womans work. The poem describes her chores for the day from baking, weeding, mending clothes, and tiding her home. The next imagery that the speaker uses paints a calm picture of nature using different seasonal examples. She uses sunshine, rain, storms, wind, and snowflakes. Mountains, the sky, oceans, stars, and moons are also examples of environmental imagery in this poem. This imagery in the poem slows down the tempo, creating a more relaxing ending for a busy start. Works Cited Maya Angelou: Global Renaissance Woman. Dr. Maya Angelou. 2013. Web. 25 Oct 2013.

Ibn Sina - 1100 Words

Ibn Sina (Research Paper Sample) Content: Ibn Sina Student Name ID Section Prepared For: Course Name And Code Due Date Ibn Sina Ibn Sina was a philosopher in the Islamic tradition. He is better known in Europe by the name of Avicenna. He was born in Khamaithen, central Asia, present day Uzbekistan in the year 980, and lived to the year 1037. He died in Hamadan, Persia in what is present day Iran. He was a Polymath, a group of ancient philosophers that believed man could acquire knowledge in all fields. The most prominent polymath is Leonardo da Vinci (Paavilainen, 2009). This paper will follow the life of Ibn Sina and detail his major contributions. Early life There is little known about his early life. The sole source of information was an autobiography that was written by his student. The lack of any other source implies that the information in this autobiography has to be taken at face value. Ibn Sina had an extraordinary level of intelligence and memory. He claimed to have learned a ll he could from his teachers by the age of 14 years. He also claimed to have memorized the entire Quran by the time he was ten years old. He was obsessed with the work of Aristotle from an early age, but he could not understand it. In fact, there are propositions that he read it more than forty times before he finally understood it with the aid of commentary from another scholar. By the time he was sixteen years, he turned his attention to medicine. By his own accounts, he was able to graduate as a fully-fledged physician by the time he was 18. He also claimed to have discovered new methods of treatment (Paavilainen, 2009). Adult life His first appointment in his adult life was as a physician of the local Emir, a term used to describe a high title from prince to general in the Islamic world. In 997, Ibn Sina aided the Emir to recover from a dangerous illness and was therefore rewarded with unlimited access to the loyal library if the Samanids (Paavilainen, 2009). However, the libr ary was destroyed by fire and some of his enemies accused him of destroying it in order to hide the source of his vast knowledge forever. During this time, Ibn Sina also helped his father with his financial problems and still found time to write some of his earliest work. However, there are contradicting sources that suggest that the father of Ibn Sina was the governor of the local area (Paavilainen, 2009). When he was 22, his father died. At around this time, the Samanid dynasty ended. Though the young Ibn Sina was offered refuge by the new empire, he chose to leave and seek applications for his talents. He endured some hard time and illness before he finally found a post lecturing in Hyrcania. He lectured in the fields of logic and astronomy. His most renowned work, the canon of medicine, was commenced while he was living there (Khan, 2006). He then settled in Rai, a city that was located close to the location of modern day Tehran, but was compelled to move by issues of insecurit y. Some of his shorter works were compiled during his time in Rai. From all these movements, it is evident that Ibn Sina lived at a time when there was great political instability. This instability affected the ability of Ibn Sina to live in one place and thus the many movements (Khan, 2006). For example, during his time in Hamadan, he was the personal physician of Sheikh  Ahmed Fadhel. However, once he was unable to revive the condition of the sheikh, leading to his death, he was forced to escape to save his life, though he was later captured and imprisoned (Khan, 2006). Later, while serving another warlord, he became ill and returned to Hamadan. Sensing that the illness was becoming stronger, he abandoned his medication and resigned to his fate. He attempted to return all gains that he had made by unjust means, freed his slaves, and devoted the rest of his life to religion (Paavilainen, 2009). Contributions to philosophy Even though Latin is the language used for philosophical and other forms of scientific writing, Ibn Sina used Arabic because at the time of his writing, it was the defacto language as a direct influence of the Islamic cultures of the day (Paavilainen, 2009). His philosophical contributions include writings in the field of ethics, metaphysics and logic. He commented on the works of Aristotle, though he seemed to be critical of the works and seems to encourage lively debates on selected subjects. In medieval times, certain scholars had a big influence on the direction of later generation students (muslimphilosophy.com). For example, most prominent philosophers had their equivalent of contemporary paradigms that shared different ideas. Ibn Sina was the most prominent writer in the Islamic world. After his death, he emerged as the most influential philosopher in the Islamic world. There are often many instances of dissonance between theology and philosophy. However, Ibn Sina was a firm Islam believer and attempted to create resonance between Islamic theology and religion (Paavilainen, 2009). Contributions to the concept of the soul Ibn Sina was one of the first persons to propose that the soul existed as a separate entity. He proposed that a person had a soul, a separate entity from the body and whose existence was independent of the physical self. The contributions of the soul also had psychological bearings (Lagerlund, 2007). For example, his work, the falling man, which was written while he was in prison, suggests that people cannot doubt their consciousness. For example, he proposed that a floating man, suspended in the air where they would be separate from all other contacts and perception, would still have the ability to perceive his...