I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou Analysis

Maya Angelou’s excerpt from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” will imaginatively take a reader away from their deskbound position to envisioning the stage of a play ornamented with fashioned rabbits, buttercups, and daisies, hearing children as they actively perfect their performance, and stimulate the readers’ appetite with the expressive words she uses to describe sweet whiffs of cinnamon and chocolate from the food samples being prepared. From Angelou’s portrayal of the play an individual will be capable of picturing white rabbits crafted from construction paper and cotton balls modelling puffy tails, together with, yellow and pink card board cut outs resembling buttercups and daisies decking a stage. The person who reads this excerpt

When you think of two strong leaders you may think of Chris McCandless and Nelson Mandela. They have both made amazing accomplishments throughout their lives. “ The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising everytime we fall,” Mandella said. They share many similarities and differences with the way that they lived their lives. “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed,” McCandless said.

From an excerpt in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou’s tone is personal and philosophical, as well as the dialect reflects her belief of

Guzman,Alyssa At first glance Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Sandra Cisneros come from different worlds and are completely different people, they lived during different centuries and experienced different things. Frederick Douglass was a slave, Malcolm X was in prison and Sandra Cisneros was the only daughter in a family with six sons. What could these people possibly have in common? They all let reading and writing change their lives, but not necessarily for the better. Reading and writing liberated their mind and help them a better connection to their goal.

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” Essay Imagine yourself on a train being sent to another state by your parents, at the age of 3 years old. You feel as if your parents simply don’t care about you anymore. Well, this is what happened to Maya Angelou. In her childhood, she dealt with problems such as parental abandonment, home displacement, sexual assault, trauma, and more.

It takes a hardworking individual with perseverance, leadership qualities and the willingness to make a change in society to become a human rights icon like Martin Luther King once was. Through the foundations of the appeal of logos from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “The truly awe-inspiring accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr”, credibility is established and maintains the basic theme that Martin Luther was an inspirational figure. The significance of rhetorical analysis aids the inputs of King’s integrity and their actions support the claim in both pieces of compositions. Throughout both publications we are able to identify the purpose of the writers and their reasoning behind their arguments. Without the use of appeals, such as

III. a. Maya Angelou was an avid writer, speaker, activist and teacher. As a result of the many hardships that she suffered while growing up as a poor black woman in the south she has used her own experiences as the subject matter of her written work. In doing this she effectively shows how she was able to overcome her personal obstacles. Her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) tells the story of her life and how she overcame and moved forward triumphantly in spite of her circumstances.

As a black woman she created a space for women to show their confidence as well as be comfortable within their own skin despite their background. Throughout her pieces, her artistic voice captures her strength, courage, and resilience which resonates with her readers. This is especially seen throughout her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which is “credited with helping other abuse survivors tell their stories” (Spring). Despite schools wanting to ban the book for its depiction of abuse, over a million copies have sold worldwide and it has been translated into a variety of languages (Spring). This demonstrates Angelou’s wide-reaching influence as more and more people are willing to read her pieces and learn about her experience as a black woman that has influenced so many other black women.

"Plot Summary: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." UXL Junior DISCovering Authors, UXL, 2003. Gale In Context: High School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ2110300004/SUIC?u=owassohs&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=a3e12822. Accessed 19 Jan. 2023. Walker, Pierre A. "Racial Protest, Identity, Words, and Form in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

Angelou’s tone perfectly illustrates the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. She writes joyously, with a hint of sadness and malcontentment reflecting the racial prejudices of the South during the 1940s. She uses phrases like “sunlight itself was young” and describes herself as “the center of the moment” to convey the excitement and joy she felt as a child on the days leading up to her graduation. She also interjects more sobering statements, such as when she speaks of “hanging ropes of parasitic moss and speaks of wishing everybody dead to characterize the struggle of African Americans during the 40s. The tone of these segments is malcontentment, sadness, and anger over the subjugation of blacks

Only few men are brave enough for standing up for what they think or know it is right. Three of those men are Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. They had a message spread out about the power of the individual to bring about social reform. Henry David Thoreau once mentioned, "That government is best which governs least".

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you lived in some other place in the world? Would it be easier to live there or harder? Depending on where you live is a big part of who you are. The thing is, for some it is really easy to be you, but something as simple as what color your skin is can change how you choose to express who you really are. The good thing is there are people like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who were willing to fight for you.

In two poems “Sympathy” written by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Caged Bird” written by Maya Angelou talk about a poor bird that is trapped in a cage and wants to be free. It longs for everything that the free bird has but it cannot achieve it. In both of the poems, there is a use of comparisons between freedom and nature. It is also interpreted from the poems that the use of a song is a form of coping for the birds. Both of the birds sing for their freedom and sing through their pain.

“Caged Bird” written by Maya Angelou in 1968 announces to the world her frustration of racial inequality and the longing for freedom. She seeks to create sentiment in the reader toward the caged bird plight, and draw compassion for the imprisoned creature. (Davis) Angelou was born as “Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St Louis, Missouri”. “Caged Bird” was first published in the collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? 1983.

Trapped. Nowhere to go and no one to turn to. You sing. But does your song really reach anyone? If you ever felt this way you certainly would have felt like the birds in these poems.