Two Different Attitudes, Two Different Worlds Essay, Research Paper
Two Different Attitudes, Two Different Worlds
In this essay I am going to compare and contrast the speakers and the stories of Homage to my Hips and Her Kind . The speakers in this stories have very different attitudes, and approaches in telling their story about the same topic. While talking about the oppression of women, both Lucille Clifton and Anne Sexton take the own stance on the situation. While Clifton expresses her proud and self-confident attitude, Sexton on the other hand speaks in a very snotty, self-righteous tone. Each of these extremely influential woman, that I will be talking about describe their own individual experiences. These experiences create a very clear, individualistic tone that makes the poems of these two writers differ in many ways.
The speaker in Homage to my Hips carries a very proud and self-confident attitude. The best example of this would be when the speaker says, These hips are mighty hips. These hips are magic hips. I have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top! (Pg705). That line is so powerful, it portrays the image that she thinks that bug women are better than men. The speaker in this poem is also a very brave and daring type of women. They don t like to be held back. These hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go (Pg705), that line shows how brave the speaker is. It conveys the message that nobody is going to hold her back form achieving her goals. During the time period that this poem was written women were stereotyped and told to look a certain way.
They were also restrained and not given the freedom they deserved. In this poem the speaker conveys the message that it is all right to be a big girl, and you don t have to be skinny to be happy. She is also trying to say that you should be your own woman regardless of what other people think about you. She sees herself as perfect in her own way and that there is nothing wrong with her. Regardless of the discrimination and the oppression by others, she will not give up, she will achieve her goals.
The speaker in Her Kind takes a very different approach in telling her story about the oppression of women. The style of this poem has a very snotty and self-righteous attitude to it. I have ridden in your cart driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes survivor, where your flames still bite my thigh, and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind (pg472). The passage from Her Kind shows that she has a very snotty attitude. She talks about how she has done this, and how she has done that. In the first part of the poem she identifies herself as not being a real woman, Lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind (Pg472). By the end of the poem she is showing that she has done what she wanted to do and she can move on and die. The speaker in this poem comes across as a very wild type of person, making her points in a very rude snotty type of way. Her purpose in this piece is to show that, as a woman, you need to break free of the chains that are holding you back. You need to reach out and take a hold of your own life, and accomplish the things that are important to you.
Both of these poems really moved me. I felt that the speaker of each poem did an excellent job of telling their story. The stories even though they were about the same topic, seemed very different because of the tone of the authors word choice and also the style of their writing.