Maya Angelou's the lesson is written in the context of her struggle and casts a reflection on her life as she is trying to analyze what death as a metaphor means to a person like her. If we look at it from the perspective of an activist who has struggled against racism, she is trying to reflect on what living on through the horrid reality of an imminent would mean to her. But in the end she indirectly asserts that she has died everyday to earn the immortality in spirit. The tone of the poem however has remained consistent throughout. It begins with death and it ends with her love for life.
