The Rose That Proved Everyone Wrong: Tupac Shakur's Poem

June Jordan once said,” Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth”. What Jordan is trying to say is that many poems have to be political, because poets tend to tell the truth about something and people will always have their opinions of whether it is right or wrong. In Tupac Shakur's poem “The Rose That Grew From The Concrete”, he talks about his struggle of getting rid of the stereotype of growing up in the ghetto. The poem should be in the textbook because it is a poem that can be interpreted in different ways for many people, but also because he uses many literary elements.

The poem “The Rose That Grew From The Concrete '', is a poem about a rose that comes from the darkness the crack in the concrete and gets sunlight and fresh air. The poem, however, reflects on the life of Tupac and how he turned his life into something better. In a biography written by Gale about Tupac Shakur, it states that Tupac once said, 'I had to reinvent myself. People think just because you born in the ghetto you gonna fit in.”. What Shakur is trying to say is that there is a stereotype of people who grow up in the ghetto are less likely to get out of the habits such as selling drugs or being in a gang. He reinvented himself by knowing he did not want that lifestyle and using poetry to help distract himself from having the urge to go out in the streets and do what people expect him to do.

Shakur’s poem should be added to our textbook because he uses different types of literary elements such as, tone, symbolism, and theme. In the poem, Shakur writes “Long live the rose that grew from concrete/ when no one else ever cared” (lines 7-8). When reading these lines the writer gives a positive tone of pride. Shakur is proud of the rose for “proving nature’s law is wrong” (3). A rose is said to only be able to grow from a rose bush that is on soil, however, by believing in itself it was able to grow from a crack in a concrete and get the sunlight and fresh air it needs to live. Tupac also uses symbolism with the concrete, it represents the ghetto where the poet is from. It represents the horrible and lack of support most people need in order to succeed in life. Another example is theme, one of the themes in the poem is independence. In his poem Tupac writes,”learned to walk without having feet” (4). This line is trying to tell the reader that the rose was able to achieve its challenge of growing from concrete on its own without the help of anyone else. It also shows that as long as one believes in themselves they can conquer any obstacle in their way to success. This poem can be interpreted in many ways and is also good to analyze, because it goes deeper than just a rose growing from the concrete.

Tupac’s poem talks about stereotypes which is something that is still very common today in our school system and society. For example, Lesandro Guzman-Feliz is a fifteen year old boy from Belmont The Bronx, New York that died due to being stabbed with machetes. In a New York Daily News written by Molly Crane-Newman writes,”...Jacquelyn Reyes, 37. 'He was a kid you allowed in your home and to eat at your table.' What Jacquelyn is trying to say is that Lesandro was not the type of kid that was disrespectful. He was the kind of person that one would not be scared to welcome into one's home. When this news first came out in 2018 many people kept thinking that because he is from the Bronx maybe he asked for what happened to him, but, as time passed more information about who Guzman-Feliz came to light and society learned that he was a bright kid that did no harm to anyone and was a hard working student at school who wanted to become a police officer. His neighbors would describe him as “cheerful and polite”. Lesandro is an example that not everyone is like the stereotype they have. He might have been from the ghetto but he was the opposite of it, instead of being in a gang and selling drugs to survive, he was a hard working student and was kind to those that came across him, proving that he was better. Another example is a fourteen year old girl named Lynn Tao who experienced a stereotype of her race. Tao was in class and answered a math question incorrectly and her classmate said to her,”How did you get that problem wrong?... And I thought Asians were supposed to be smart'. Asian people have the stereotype that they are hard working and very scholarly. This helped Lynn to see that we live in a world where stereotypes for every race exist. But it is the job of individuals to not let stereotypes define who they are.

Tupac Shakur’s Poem “The Rose That Grew From The Concrete '' is a poem that can be interpreted in different ways. It keeps the reader intrigued and uses many different types of literary elements which is why his poem should be added to our textbook. Shakur's poem also talks about stereotypes that are something big and very common still in today's world not only in our society but in our school system too.