Analysis Of Maya Angelou And A Far Cry From Africa

“Home is where the heart is” a known motto said by many but can have different meanings. Home is symbolized as the one safe haven many people turn back to and have the most affection for. In the poems “Africa” by Maya Angelou and “A Far Cry from Africa” by Derek Walcott both show significant importance of how their home is for them. In both poems Africa is the main theme based in each of the author’s viewpoints Africa is expressed in its actions instead of a being harmonious and a place to return to, almost breaking the image of home but instead giving you a story of how “home” really is. In Maya Angelou “Africa” she describes her home Africa as being a battered women who has overcome hardship and is still trying to rise above and cope with such hardships. Her image of home is mainly on a history and memory standpoint, mostly speaking on how Africa has been through so much from being robbed of her family and being harmed “took her young daughters / sold her strong sons […] bled her with guns” (13-16) pretty much not sugar coating the past her Africa has had but in the end she’s still able to rise above all those …show more content…
In Maya Angelou’s poem it’s a little complicated at first when you read through the stanzas you would think it was written in a heroic couplet sort of pattern but it switches up and seems very free verse but I guess that’s just Maya’s style of writing. There’s definitely personification and symbolism in the poem by Maya making her home Africa into a woman and using her different body parts to represent and describe some of the features her home has. “Deserts her hair / golden her feet / mountains her breasts” (3-5). In “A Far Cry from Africa” in the beginning, it starts off similar to Maya’s poem in sort of in a heroic couplet pattern, but instead of switching up to free verse it goes into an iambic pentameter kind of pattern. The mood begins to shift from positive to