"Graduation" analysis

Tone

The tone of "Graduation" is made very exciting by the author.  The author built and built the anxiousness up to the days until she would graduate.  She speaks of every event with extreme detail which makes everyone reading it restless until the actual day.  In one sentence she speaks of the making of her dress. "My class was wearing butter-yellow piqu6 dresses, and Momma launched out on mine. She smocked the yoke into tiny crisscrossing puckers, then shirred the rest of the bodice. Her dark fingers ducked in and out of the lemony cloth as she embroidered raised daisies around the hem."  How excited and proud she was of this dress makes the reader realize how very important this event is to her.  She keeps the tone exciting by not only talking about the presents she receives from her family and friends, but by simply imagining herself walking up the stairs to receive her diploma.  As she enters the auditorium, though, her tone changes from excited to unsure.  She gives us the feeling as if something bad is going to happen.  As the white men come out to speak, our feelings had been confirmed.  They talk about how the black boys would only get to be the Owen's of the world and didn't even mention anything of the girls.  The author's tone quickly turns from unsure to depressing.  She claims that she had wished every important person who helped in creating this country had died and the rest of the African Americans to lay dead in piles since they would never amount to anything.  She keeps this tone until Henry Reed and the rest of the audience sings the black national anthem.  Her tone changes then again to a very strong, proud African American girl.