Brave & Startling Truth

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A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH One who has never truly loved, has never lived. In Maya Angelou’s poem, A Brave and Startling Truth, Angelou thoroughly expresses her feelings on the importance of love and its ability to grant what she considers a real life. This poem, speaks with such passion and sincerity about the importance of being taken away by this god-like creation Love. The poem argues that we as beings are unaccustomed to courage, and live in solitude. We are alone, with a pulse, but yet still without a real life. It takes Love’s sweet jolt of electricity to liberate us into life. Though, to access this liberation, one must be brave enough and vulnerable enough for love to break their personal barricade of fear. Ultimately, Maya Angelou conveys the themes of liberation through love, equality and freedom through love, and bravery to realize the liberation of love. There is no more liberating experience than the experience of being in love. According to poets and authors, love gives us life; love gives us the power to make others feel special; love makes us feel like we are floating on a cloud of infinite possibilities, and love gives our lives purpose. Maya Angelou writes that without love, we are living meaningless lives, in solitude. To breathe does not mean one is alive. This poem says that we are alive when and only when “love leaves it’s high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life.” In that instance, our lives that were once meaningless, have meaning, and we become emancipated. The experience of loving has the ability to make us feel like new individuals. Love can make us feel like the people we are destined to be. Angelou states that it is after love enters our lives, that we truly become “the possible” and “the true wonders of this world.” Love is the ultimate expression of freedom. Angelou, a poet, author,
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