Poem Reading Response

Oscar Mendez        

In one’s lifetime, s/he will be presented many fears, and we do decide to not cope or address them, when we should really should be trying to beat and conquer them. Maya Angelou’s poem Life Doesn’t Frighten Me addresses fears many people face, but her poem use of the repetition of the line “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” shows the reader that he or she should not be afraid of the things we face, but be brave and conquer them.

Repetition is used to empathize a point, and Maya decided to repeat the line “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” a total of 10 times, she tends places them after noting down a fear, “Panthers in the park/Strangers in the dark/No, they don’t frighten me at all.” She does this to show courage and dominance over the fear, “Tough guys fight/All alone at night/Life doesn’t frighten me at all.” To show that she’s not afraid of these things. She’s writing this to show bravery, the repetition is used to show us that we must not be afraid of our fears, but conquer them as she did.

Maya Angelou addresses childlike fears in her poem as well, “Shadows on the wall/Noises down the hall/Life doesn’t frighten me at all.” She addresses these fear to show that they are weak and easily conquerable. We shouldn’t be afraid of them because they aren’t truly big fears. The line, “Bad dogs barking loud/Big ghosts in a cloud/Life doesn’t frighten me at all.” Addresses fears that are passed through with age, they don’t stick. Maya Angelou shows us in her poem that some fears are easy to get over, and that we shouldn’t be scared. That we shouldn’t be sacred of these trivial fears at all.

No one at any age should feel scared of something. Maya in her poem talks about poem s that people of a variety of ages face, such as the lines, “Mean old Mother Goose/Lions on the loose/They don’t frighten me at all…Don’t show me frogs and snakes and listen or my scream… That new classroom where/Boys all pull my hair.” They suggest childlike fears. While the lines, “Tough guys fight/All alone at night…Strangers in the dark.” Suggest more mature fears. She does this back and forth scheme to show us the fears many people of different ages face, and they are ALL followed by the line, “They don’t frighten me at all.” She does this repetition after these different fears to tell us that we shouldn’t be scared, of anything at all. Because she has gotten passed them, which she has empathized.

“Life doesn’t frighten me at all/Not at all/Not at all/Life doesn’t frighten me at all.” We should be afraid of the things life throws at us, they can get passed, as Maya has passed them, by using repetition. We need to persevere and get passed these fears that are either trivial, childlike, or even just by conquering them, such as more mature fears.