Still I Rise

Angelou’s use of the first person point of view suggests that the speaker of this poem may be a version of Angelou herself. By using the first person pronouns “I” and “my,” Angelou can express her personal feelings about racism while also leaving the gender of the speaker ambiguous and including more individuals in her identification with a collective mindset. By addressing the poem to an unspecified “you,” the poet both criticizes racism by targeting the imagined “you” while also incriminating the audience and reader as a participant in the oppression. Angelou’s use of rhetorical questions, or questions that do not demand nor expect an answer, allows readers to reflect upon their own participation in racial oppression. Her use of “you” blends individual and collective experiences as it could refer to a singular person or to a group.

Angelou’s use of pronouns shifts throughout the poem. The word “you” dominates the beginning of the poem, but disappears completely from the last two stanzas. This initial use of the second person illustrates attempts by the “you” of the poem tries to oppress and diminish the “I” of the poem. The poem’s structure demonstrates that this tactic is unsuccessful because each stanza ends as the “I”  speaks and claims their own space. The final two stanzas complete the shift as Angelou exclusively uses the pronoun “I.”

The beginning of the poem exclusively uses similes, or, comparisons between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as.” The speaker often compares their self to natural elements, “like dust” (Line 4) and “like air” (Line 24) and “[j]ust like moons and like suns” (Line 9). The speaker uses similes to express the value of self-confidence and their refusal to succumb to racial oppression. They compare their walk to “oil wells / Pumping in [their] living room” (Lines 7-8), their laugh to “gold mines / Diggin’ in [their] own backyard” (Lines 19-20), and their dance to “diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs” (Lines 27-28).

In the last two stanzas of the poem, Angelou shifts to metaphors, or, comparisons between unlike things without using the words like or as. Metaphors have the effect of saying that the two things are the same. In this case, the speaker becomes “a black ocean” (Line 33) and “the dream and the hope of the slave” (Line 40). The poem suggests that these things, in contrast to the objects of the similes, are more valuable as the speaker rises to this level. Rather than identifying with something materialistic, the speaker transcends the material to embody the history of Black people and their aspirations for the future.