Life Cycles

Life Cycles
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Giovanni uses similes, repetition, the motif of dark and black and the motif of secrets to capture the gender role and racial role of a black female. Giovanni, to the reader is the speaker in Life Cycles. The title Life Cycles has the reader thinking that life is a cycle. Cycles repeat and have a series and sequence that people create for themselves. The tone expressed in the poem is gloom because it is a dark atmosphere. Giovanni begins the poem with, “she realized se wasn’t one of life’s winners when she wasn’t sure life to her was some dark dirty secret that like some unwanted child too lat for an abortion was to be borne alone.” Giovanni explains that the female that she is referring to isn’t lucky in life and that life is a struggle itself. The simile in the first stanza declares that the female that she is referring to has a child and she feels alone. The word alone is in one line of the first stanza to focus on the harsh reality of the black female that she is uncared for and unaided. Giovanni also uses the motif of black and dark by saying, “in the dark sadness is not an unusual state for the black woman or writers”. Giovanni expresses that sadness, gloom and depression is the normal state of the female black woman that she is referring to. She also expresses that life is cruel. Giovanni also declares the gender role of a female and the racial stereotype of a black female is to resist, fight and to always be miserable. In the end, Giovanni says, “she boxed her life like a special private seed planting it in her emotional garden to see what weeds would rise to strangle her.” Giovanni ends with declaring that the female put away her like a seed that needs plating. This means that her problems that need to be fixed, needs to blossom. The weeds represent the horrible people in her life or the trials in life.