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Alone Summary
"Alone" starts off with our speaker doingsome serious soul-searching. She's
feeling pretty isolated, but she thinks
she just might have come up with an
answer to her problems: people need
community in order to get by.
As it turns out, money won't buy you
happiness. Even the very, very rich get
lonely. So, don't try to make more
money. Make friends instead.
Our speaker fashions herself into
something like a prophet, warning the
"race of man" that things aren't about to
get any easier anytime soon. The
solution is (all together now.) torealize that no one can make it on their
own!
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Stanza 1 Summary
Get out the microscope, becausewere going through this poem line-
by-line.
Lying, thinking
Last night
You know how your teachersalways ask you to locate the timeand place of the action in a literarypiece? Well, Maya Angelou ismaking it pretty easy for you to getthat little bit of tediousness out ofthe way in the first few lines. Ourspeaker's relating something that
happened last night as she (or he)was drifting off to sleep.
You could think of this as the "pre-flight" messages of this particular
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poem. You're still on the tarmac, butthe flight attendants make sure tolet you know where you're at and
where you're going (along withpassing along nifty information likehow to tighten your seat belt andmaybe even how to ask for morepeanuts). You can almost feel thispoem revving its engines and
getting ready to take off. Notice how the first two lines are
almost half the length of the otherlines in this stanza? It's almost as ifAngelou split the first line in two.
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
If you're wondering why you get awhole bunch of religious websiteson your screen when you Googlethis poem, look no further. These
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lines are the religious heart and,um, soul of the poem.
So, what are they all about? Well,
for starters, the speaker seems tothink that her soul is a-wandering.You'd think that it would be safelylodged in her body, but no. It turnsout that the soul needs somewhereelse to live.
And here's where these lines reallyget interesting: have you ever heardof water being "thirsty"? For onething, water isn't a sentient being. Itdoesn't really get hungry or tired orworry about being late for school.
It's just water. But that's beside the point. Even if
water didfeel things, it probablywouldn't feel thirsty, would it? Afterall, what do you usually drink toquench your thirst? (If you said "DietPepsi," we really need to talk.)
Nope, you usually drinkwater. So,Angelou's turn of phrase suggeststhat something is seriously screwedup in the natural order of things. If
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even water can recognize its naturalqualities in this world, then maybethe soul doesneed to go searching
for another world in which to live. and BAM. That's where we get
into God's territory. See, afundamental component of Christiantheology is the belief that the humansoul is in God's care. In other
words, its "home" is not in this world(Earth) but in the heavens (withGod).
The next line might seem toreinforce this belief, but it does sowith a weird twist. See, the whole
bread/stone thing is actually areference to the Bible, specificallyMatthew 4:3, when Satan tries totempt Jesus to turn stones intobread. (Jesus, of course, doesn't fallfor it.)
So, how does this particular
reference fit into the poem? Well,here are our best guesses:
Option 1: Angelou's suggesting thatSatan has won: stones turn into
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bread (so bread, conversely, isactually stone). We're a little worriedabout what that means for Jesus,
but hey, that's not our concern rightnow.
Option 2: Angelou's using thereference loosely, suggesting thatbread which is anything butbread isa bad thing. We'd be inclined to
agree!
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
OK. Here it is. After hours andhours of sleepless searching, ourspeaker's figured it all out. Staytuned, folks.
but before we get there, weshould mention that it seems a littlestrange that our speaker needs toassert how right she is beforeshetells us what she's figured out. Doth
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our speaker protest too much?Right now, it's still too early to tell.
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Ah. Here's the wisdom acquired bythat sleepless soul searching.People need other people.
And just so you don't think thatyou're excluded from that
statement, our speaker makes sureto say it twice: Nobody can get byall by themselves. That means you,too.
Notice how the speaker puts herselfin the same boat as the rest of us?
She doesn't say that people can'tmake it out "there" alone. Nope.The speaker is in the same mess asthe rest of us. We're all "here"wherever that is. And believe us,
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"here" isn't all that pretty.
Stanza 2 Summary
Get out the microscope, because
were going through this poem line-
by-line.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
In case you missed it the first timearound, our speaker repeatsherself. People need other people.Got it?
And we should point out that thisstanza is actually a repetition of thelast couple of lines of the firststanza. This structure sets up a sortof call-and-response within the
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poem. You can almost imagine oneperson singing the last few lines ofstanza one and then an entire
chorus of people responding bysinging the exact same words.
Such call and response structuresare actually pretty common in blackspirituals, which tend to have analmost identical format: first a story,
then a chorus, then the repeatedversion of that chorus, and thenmore story. By crafting her poemalong these lines, Angelou allows itto carry echoes of a long and well-developed tradition.
Interestingly, spirituals tend to besung by groups of people. In otherwords, when the "chorus" getsaround to singing this verse, therewould be lots and lots of peoplesinging. Notice any irony here?They wouldn'tbe singing "all alone."
In some ways, then placing thispoem in the spiritual genre allowsthe poem to become its ownsolution!
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There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Think this poem is only about thespeaker? Oh, no. Everyone eventhe millionaire gets discussedwhen the speaker tackles thisparticular problem.
Why pick on millionaires? Well,they're sort of a stand-in for thepeople who are supposedly happyand successful. After all, they make
millions! But how do they really farein the world? Let's find out
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
Well, it turns out that they don't fareso well.
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A "banshee" is a rather loud andannoying spirit who wails loudlyand tends to show up when
someone is about to die. They'rerather unpopular figures in Irishmythology. In other words, they'renot all that much fun to be around.
And then we get to the kids. As faras our speaker is concerned, the
kids are isolated and singing theirown "blues."
It turns out that this "family" ofmillionaires is actually isolated andfragmented. Each person operateson his or her own. There's no sense
of community.
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
Hmm. So, it turns out that theseproblems are not, in fact, medicalproblems. More importantly, as far
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as our speaker is concerned, thechoice to fix your body without fixingyour soul is a big, big mistake.
We've got to admit, our speaker hasa point. If you think about it,healthcare is sort of omnipresentthese days. If you're feeling sad, trysome antidepressants. If you looktoo old, there's always Botox.
Believe us, medicine has a valuableplace in society. We're the first onesto sign up for flu shots! But whenthe speaker talks about the richpeople's "hearts of stone," we'reguessing that she's speaking
metaphorically. She's not interestedin the heart as a giant muscle.She's interested in that thing the TinMan was missing in The Wizard ofOz a heart that helps you connectand feel.
But nobody
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No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
hmmm. We feel like we've heardthis one before.
Moral of this particular story: thespeaker can't make it alone. Andrich people can't make it alone,either.
You could think of this part of thestanza as a sort of checking back inwith the central message of thepoem: the speaker tells a little story,and then this chorus comes back tohammer home the point. We all
experience the same sort ofisolation.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
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Can make it out here alone.
Sigh. Yet more alone-ness. Want to hear our spiel on why this
repetition is interesting? Check outwhat we have to say about Stanza2.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Aha. Now we're getting to the goodstuff. We've followed the speakerthrough her own trials and troubles.We've seen how she relates thosetroubles to other folks who seem tohave happier, better lives. And nowwe're about to get the big pay-off.
Notice how our speaker hassomehow morphed into an authorityfigure over the course of these past
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few stanzas? She's gone from yourrun-of-the-mill insomniac to aperson we trust to change the most
fundamental problems of our life. How in the world did this happen? Well, we're not totally sure. But
we're betting that it has somethingto do with all of that repetition wementioned earlier. If you repeat
something often enough, chancesare that your listeners will start tobelieve it. And our speaker'sbanking on precisely thisphenomenon.
But it looks like there's even more
that she's about to reveal. Are yousitting on the edge of your chair?
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blowThe race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
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Wow. So nature (the clouds and thewind) is starting to participate in theturmoil of the human soul. What in
the world is going on here? Option 1: It could be like that
amazing children's book,Cloudywith a Chance of Meatballs. Youknow, the one where the elementstend to mirror people's desires? In
this case, we get storms and notfood, but you get the general idea.
Option 2: Angelou could also betapping into a pretty Romantictradition. (Just to be clear: we meanthe literary period Romantic with a
big "R" not the warm fuzzy heartsand love sort of romance.) For theRomantics, like Wordsworth andTennyson, feelings could bedescribed by aligning them withelements of the natural world. Inother words, it's not storming
outside becausewe're all unhappy.We see a storm and realizethat itneatly mirrors our own rather crappysituation. It's a subtle difference, we
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know, but it's a pretty important one. Notice how Angelou's speaker is
clearly establishing herself once
again as the authority figure in thisparticular scenario? She's the onewho's in tune with the problems andsufferings of man. But don't worry.We're about to hear the solution.After all, that's what she promises
us right at the beginning of thisstanza.
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Hey, wait a second! What happenedto our solutions? We were promised
solutions! And all we get is thisrefrain? C'mon. We've heard thisone before!
Whew. Now that we've got that outof our system, maybe we can talk
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about whythis poem doesn't offerany solutions. After all, it's not atwelve-step program or a self-help
manual. It's a poem. Deal with it. Maybe Angelou doesn't offer any
specific answers becausethere aren'tspecific answers.People make friends in differentways. People define communities in
different ways. You could have2,078 Facebook friends and still belonely. You could have 2.078Facebook friends and feelsurrounded by love. You could havea pet turtle and feel surrounded by
love. Who are we to judge? However you define community (or,
as this poem would say, a "home"for your soul), though, you need it.And you need it now.
Alone, all alone
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Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Seriously? You want moreanalysisof this refrain? C'mon, folks. It's thesixth time we've read it. SIX. That'sa lot of times.
OK, fine.. Check out Stanza 2.That's all we've got.
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"Alone" lives somewhere in the no
man's land between formal regularity
and an absolute free-for-all. There are
some absolutes: every other stanza, forexample, is exactly the same. (We're
talking about stanzas 2, 4, and 6 here).
The first, third, and fifth stanzas are
another story. They all have nine linesunless you count the first stanza, which
has ten. (We couldargue that the first
two lines of the poem are actually one
split line, but that's another story.) And
those lines tendto have six or seven
syllables unless, of course, you're
talking about the 7th or 8th line. Those
have four syllables each.
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Confused yet? We don't blame you.
Here's what we doknow: there's not a
metrical or formal regularity to thispoem. There is, however, a sort of
formal logic to the way that the poem's
narrative unfolds.
Think of it as a camp song: the camp
counselor lays out a little bit of a story
(six lines of it, to be precise) and then
sings a verse that's easy to remember
(in terms of our poem, this is always the
last three lines of the stanza). And then
the campers sing the verse back to thecounselor. (That's the second, fourth,
and sixth stanzas.) It's easy to
remember because, well, if you're in the
chorus, you don't have all that much to
remember.
Come to think about it, these sorts of
call-and-response songs have been
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popular for centuries. They were a big
part of church traditions back when it
wasn't common for everyone to havehymnals. They're the format most
military marching songs tend to take:
the C.O. shouts something out, and the
squad shouts back a reply. They're the
core of most oral traditions when you
aren't able to write everything down, it's
good to have a refrain as a sort of
memory marker.
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Speaker Point of View
Who is the speaker, can she or he
read minds, and, more importantly,
can we trust her or him?
The speaker in this poem is a funny sort
of character. She starts out as yourregular, run-of-the-mill insomniac, a
person who lets all sorts of thoughts run
through her head because she just can't
seem to sleep.
By the end of the poem, however, the
speaker's become something like our
cultural conscience. She seems to know
and see all of our suffering. And we
do mean ALL of our suffering. This
speaker seems to be blowing a warninghorn. Things aren't getting any better. In
fact, they seem to be getting worse.
And as the crisis reaches its tipping
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point, our speaker's omniscience only
seems to increase.
We've got to admit, though, this
speaker plays a rather dirty trick on the
reader: she promises us some sort of
revelation, letting us know that she's
about to reveal what she knows (line
22), and then she tells us. nothing.
OK, it's not nothing. But she sure
doesn't give us any tools to combat the
alone-ness that seems to be creeping
though the world like a plague. Nope.
She just points out that people shouldn't
be alone. Hmm, thanks. Thanks a lot.
That's sort of like going to the doctor
with a broken leg and being told that
people shouldn't break bones. Wemight have grasped that the first time
around. We're not saying that she
doesn't have a valid point. We're just a
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little upset that there don't seem to be
any clear solutions.
Then again, that's not our speaker's
responsibility, is it? Aren'twethe ones
who are supposed to figure out our own
problems? Well, yes. But we'd probably
like the speaker a whole lot more if she
could just help us out a little!
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Alone Setting
Where It All Goes Down
We know right where this poem begins:
in the speaker's bed, late at night.
Where it ends, however, is another
matter entirely. You can almost see the
thought bubbles coming up from the
speaker's bed and floating out into the
wide, wide world.
See, by the time we're in the second
stanza, this poem is clearly settled in
the Real World. You know, that worldwhere some people have cash and
some people don't a world that's
economically and socially stratified.
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There's no room for dreamy idealism, or
any of the pensive nighttime thoughts
that occupy the speaker's mind inStanza 1.
And then, by the time we're at Stanza 5,
we've zoomed out far enough to be able
to consider the entire "race of man." In
other words, we've moved waaaaay
back. We like to think of it as a "Earth
seen from the Moon" sort of view.
So, from one little bed to the entire
world at a glance? It seems like setting
just isn't this poem's most important
focal point. Or perhaps it's important
that the setting shifts if only because
the problems that our speaker finds
remain the same. Whether you're inyour own bed at night or watching the
rich and famous (probably on reality TV)
or looking at the Earth from the Moon,
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you're probably alone. Or at least you
feel alone.
When we get right down to it, this poem
centers itself on an emotional
landscape: the homelessness of the
human soul. The roving, searching
heart has no home- which is perhaps
why we move from setting to setting in
this poem as well.
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Sound Check
Read this poem aloud. What do youhear?
Have you ever listened to a gospel choir
in concert? The sound FILLS the room.
It sends shivers down your spine, brings
tears to your eyes, and makes youforget about everything else but the
music.
We like to think of this poem as just that
sort of sound. Sure, it starts out with justone voice, singing (or, if we're being
precise, speaking) but by the time we
get to the first refrain, it starts to sound
like there's more than one voice
involved here. And by the time that our
speaker starts to address the problems
of other folks in Stanza 3, she's already
dealing with the whole community. It's
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safe to assume that she's no longer
talking to herself in bed at night. She's
got an audience. And from the sound ofthings, they're taking an active part in
creating the refrains of the poem.
Try reading this poem all by yourself.
Then try reading it with a few of your
friends. You'll see what we mean. The
refrains aremeantto be choral pieces.
They just sound better when a whole
bunch of people are speaking along
together. And that's part of the hopeful
message of this poem. If you imaginethe refrain being spoken by a choir of
voices, then the poem itself is already
moving outside the spaces of isolation
and alone-ness that the speaker so
hates. Nifty, huh?
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Alone Theme of Isolation
Lonesomeness is something that all humans (no matter who they are or
where they live) know well. In a way, it connects us. However, the speaker of"Alone" warns that we cannot go through life all by our lonesome selves.
Life will swallow us whole unless we've got family, friends, or a community
of some kind to help us through the hard times.
Questions About Isolation
1. Does the speaker ever actually say that the millionaire is alone? How do we
know that he fits into the same category as the speaker?
2. Do you think that the speaker is talking to an audience in this poem? If so,
who?
3. How many times does the word "alone" appear in this poem?4. Why do you think Angelou says "nobody can make it all alone" instead of
something like "everybody needs other people"? What is the difference
between these two phrases?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
Although "Alone" seems to worry that people are isolated, the poem itself
actually breaks out of isolation by addressing other people.
There isn't any solution to the isolation described in this poem.
Alone Theme of Suffering
The speaker of "Alone" ominously declares that "the race of man is suffering/
and I can hear the moan." Instead of talking about how suffering is something
that all humans experience at some point in their lives, our speaker warns
people about a change she observes in the world. It's as though humans are
suffering more and more. She's noticing a shift in how humans live, and she'sworried.
Questions About Suffering
1. What do you think causes the speaker the most suffering in this poem?2. Do you think that all people suffer equally in this poem? The speaker? The
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millionaire? The millionaire's wife?
3. Why is being alone a bad thing? How does this poem describe it?
4. Is the loneliness in the world getting better or worse? What section of the
poem helps you to come to this conclusion?
Chew on ThisTry on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
Although the speaker suggests that being alone is the cause of suffering in
this poem, the true suffering seems to come from not knowing how to
nourish the soul.
This poem offers a cure for suffering: finding a community that can nourish
the soul.
Alone Theme of SpiritualityWe know from the start of "Alone" that our speaker is struggling to find her
spirituality, to feel connected to something greater than herself. She is lying
in her bed thinking about how to find her soul a home. As a result of her need
and quest for spirituality, she has a revelation about all people. She realizes
that in order for people to find homes for their souls, they have to stick
together. Community helps spirituality flourish.
Questions About Spirituality
1. Is this poem about finding religion? Why or why not?2. Is this poem advocating spiritual renewal by turning to a god or to a
community? What in the poem helps you to come to your conclusion?
3. How do the references to the Bible contribute to the poem?
4. Do you think that the alone-ness described in this poem is fixable in this
life? Why or why not?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
There's no actual cure (in this world) for the alone-ness that the speaker
describes in this poem.
The cure for the alone-ness the speaker describes can be found by re-
connecting with people around us.
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Alone Theme of Society and Class
Lots of people feel that money can cure everything, but the speaker of
"Alone" (and the Notorious B.I.G.) knows differently. She tells us that evenmillionaires, with more money than they can use, can't make it through life
all alone. Money doesn't bring happiness and it doesn't chase the blues way,
she argues. In fact, it seems to make some people even lonelier. Loneliness,
therefore, is something that everyone, regardless of money or class, copes
with. It's a powerful force.
Questions About Society and Class
1. Why do you think the speaker singles out millionaires in Stanza 3?
2. Do you think that the millionaire's kids suffer differently than other kids? If
so, how?3. Do you think that this poem is about all people everywhere? Why or why
not?
4. Does this alone-ness seem to be getting worse in this particular time? Why
or why not?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
As it turns out, money actually makes people less fulfilled than other, poorer
people.
Money doesn't affect whether or not a person is alone at all.
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