“Alone” by Maya Angelou is a poem which brings out the bitter fact that no one on the earth can ever live alone. She says that people always want other people to depend on.

The starts the poem by saying that she is lying alone and thinking of a place for her soul to live, which would also mean that her soul is wandering. Her soul does not want to live in the place where it lives in the present. Soul here could also be he Identity as Maya Angelou is an African American, her identity does not have a place. In the next few lines she talks about water not being thirsty and where bead loaf is not stone. Usually water does not have any feeling but if at all it does, it would never feel thirsty. With this she says that something is seriously wrong with the natural order of things. Because when water can feel thirsty the human soul should have a place to live. When she talks about the bread not being a stone, it might be a reference to the Bible, where Satan attempts to tempt Jesus to turn bread into stones.

Between lines 6 and 10, the poet comes up with something but is not sue if she is right. In spite she confesses that nobody can really make it up alone on this earth. She not only talks about herself but she also talks about the millionaire who have a lot of money but she is trying to find out if they have real happiness in their lives. She says that the wives of the millionaires are running around like banshees meaning to say that they are not fun to be around and their kids sing their own blues. She basically means that the families of the millionaires are isolated and each member of the family leads his/he own life and there is no sense of community among them.

Next she talks about the heart of these millionaires. She does not see their heart as just a piece of a giant muscle but she sees it as something which has feelings and connections. Then she metaphorically states that their heart is like a stone with no sense of feelings. And then she goes back to saying that nobody can ever be alone.

The last but one stanza might mean the suffering of the Africans, like the way they are treated by the English men. It is well known that the Africans were treated as slaves by the English men. She might be referring the gathering of the storm clouds as the arrival of the colonizers and the wind she talks about could be the act of slavery. She says that the race of mankind is suffering and she could hear the moaning of the colonized.

Thought out the poem she constantly says the fact that nobody can survive without depending on others. She has also brought out this fact beautifully through her effective poem.