Graduation and Mother Tongue

Graduation and Mother Tongue

Mothers Tongue and Graduation are two narrations depicting the writer’s experience. In one the experience relates to spoken language and how her way of speaking differs in different situations. On the other the speaker is giving insight into her experience relating to graduating and the giving details into how it came to fruition and the struggles that she faced while doing so. In both of these writings there are three important factors that must be represented, the ethos, pathos, and logos. What follows is my personal understanding of how these are represented in the writings.

In the essay “The Graduation”, Maya Angelou tells the story of life in 1940s Stamps, Arkansas. She explains how it feels to be discriminated and thought of as less than equal. Angelou shows that with a strong will to overcome, it is more than possible to set aside disgusting racism and impersonal discrimination. Angelou delivers a very detailed, inspirational, and informative story of self-acceptance. In “Mothers Tongue”, Tan demonstrates credibility by opening her essay stating that she is not scholar of English or literature but stating she is a writer. She distinguishes that she does not major in language but specializes in speaking language. This is for the betterment of her ethos and by stating these things she clearly identifies that yes she is flawed in speaking English. She knows how to write well. This effect helps illustrate her point that she is writing to indicate that the significance of language and how it affects our culture and to those coming into it.

In “Graduation”, Maya Angelou demonstrates credibility in her essay; she is at the graduation because it is hers. She is a young African American woman who is proud of her academic achievement and she strives to bring the reader into her world. She speaks to any outsider to the text whether they are black or white and subtly asks them for empathy and understanding. Initially she writes with enthusiasm expressing her excitement about her graduation putting emphasis on all the details used to make her day special. Her dress was special and hand sewn by her mother with patience and pride. Her parents closed their shop for graduation prioritizing their daughter’s moment of glory over the possibility of a few dollars. She is direct with the message of graduation being an important milestone, a happy time that should be cherished.

 In “Mothers Tongue”, Amy used Pathos the most in her writing. The things she wrote made the audience feel a sense sorrow for her upbringing as a Asian American. She herself having issues, had to have feelings of guilt while writing about them. I felt these to be good excerpts of pathos. “I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life”. And “It had always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than broken, as if it were damaged and need to be fixed”. I can almost feel the guilt she may have had in her heart to have felt that way about her mother’s use of English. “I was ashamed of her English. I feel her English reflected she herself the quality of what she had to say”. Who wouldn’t feel ashamed, bad or even emotional about thinking this of their own mother?

 In “Graduation”, Maya Angelo used Pathos to depict the African American community her experience of losing pride in her race and then regaining her faith through figurative language such as hyperboles, which are used to allow the reader to visualize the situations and change in tone. In order to present the idea of how inferior white people make. Black people feel. Maya Angelou uses changes her tone from someone who is happy and nervous about a graduation to someone who is angry and unsatisfied because of the white person who speaks at the graduation.

Maya Angelou wrote "Graduation" in a change of tone to convey the idea that any student of any race has the ability to graduate and uses hyperbole to point out how Negros should not be treated any differently than any other race because anyone is able to accomplish something great. Maya Angelou wrote “Graduation” in order to present an emotionally charged message regarding the effect a milestone such as graduation can have on someone’s thought process, delivered through the use of figurative language such as hyperbole and extended metaphors. Maya Angelou encourages white southerners to mentally graduate from a segregated way of thinking to a more integrated way of thinking by drawing parallels between this purpose and her own graduation from high school; she uses appeals to pathos to accomplish this purpose.

In “Mother Tongue”, Tan also uses logos by showing how her mother’s English was a limiting factor at times in the sense that she was treated differently. “The fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously”. Amy Tan has convinced me as a reader that not one type of spoken English is “correct.” Rather, it is how we use the language to bring across ideas and images that is vital. For example, although many of Amy’s friends could not understand her mother’s English, to her, her mother’s English was very “vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery”. In “Graduation”, Maya Angelo She begins by telling the reader about where she grows up and some of the aspects of her life and near the end of the story the tone switches to keep the reader’s attention, well mines at least. The whole graduation experience is an emotional one, so I would say that pathos play a big part in this passage. The speaker is indeed convincing. After I was finished reading, I got a sense of the author’s life and how she’s influenced by family, friends and her peers and teachers.

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