Introduction
The Hill We Climb has allusions to present culture in the United States of America, as well as recent economic, cultural, and political concerns, all from the poet’s viewpoint. The poem was originally recited at Joe Biden’s inaugural ceremony as President of the United States of America. Amanda Gorman’s poetry The Hill We Climb is a 110-line work without a rhyme system or metrical rhythm. Although the piece is composed in free verse, it does not lack rhyme or rhythm. Ultimately, The Hill We Climb is an excellent literary work that emphasizes the desire of the American people for a better future and a united country through the intelligent usage of metaphors, symbolism, and repetition.
General Idea
The poem encompasses both the country’s long history and its fight for and against fundamental rights for all citizens, as well as modern history. This covers cases in the United States throughout the preceding several years, as well as the weeks prior to the presidential inaugural ceremony. The topics contain the assassination of George Floyd, as well as numerous police killings in recent years and decades, and the insurgency at the US Capitol. Amanda Gorman used womanist-appropriate language to bring hope to the United States present situation by recognizing a cultural phenomenon. Gorman’s work was not only historically significant for all Americans, but it also had literary value.
Interpretation
Amanda Gorman combines the imagery of darkness and light, hope and terror throughout the poem to symbolize the two conflicting sides of America, those who wish to split and those who want to unite. Her picture of the country is not one of collapse or failure but one of progress toward becoming what its rhetoric already promises. She attempts to give people confidence that happier times are approaching. She reverts to the picture of light and darkness multiple times, emphasizing how America is emerging from the shadows and moving toward the light. Amanda generally explains to the audience that this is not an effortless path to follow and that issues do not change rapidly. Nevertheless, if one attempts to work, lives honestly, and lets the nation’s magnificence shine through.
Figurative Language
In The Hill We Climb, Amanda Gorman employs a number of literary tropes. Anaphora, enjambment, dangling modifiers, and allusion are examples of these devices. Generally, the latter is believed to be one of the piece’s most essential techniques. It happens when the writer makes a passing allusion to something but fails to capture it accurately. She alluded to America’s and the planet’s challenges in 2020, as well as the bigger concerns related to Trump’s leadership, in her statement. Enjambment is a popular formal method in which the poet stops a line short before its natural end. Anaphora is a form of repetition in which the poet repeats the same syllable or phrase at the start of many lines of text. In terms of the usage of figurative language, it is feasible to state that a combination of symbolism and metaphor is used in the poem’s concluding lines. Dawn’s brightness is a symbol, and Gorman expands on it by proposing that the audience might embody that spark through metaphor. Furthermore, the author employs parallelism by repeatedly employing nouns altered by compound adjectives.
Conclusion
Concerning the personal factor of influence related to the poem of Amanda Gorman, it can be noted that the main feature of the poem, to my mind, is its dual connection in terms of essence. Firstly, the work can be linked to literary writings since it is composed and represented as a poem with rhymes and a specific structure of line formation and order. In addition, it is feasible to highlight that this work is an important and valuable part of the social life of the whole country. To summarize, the poem spans both the country’s lengthy history and the battle for and against universal human rights, as well as recent history.
Work Cited
Gorman, Amanda. “The Hill We Climb.” 2021. Poetry, Web.