All of childhood’s unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places, and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood (Angelou, 2009, p.20). In Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, she recounts her early years as a young girl growing up in Stamps, Arkansas who faces displacement, trauma, and prejudice. It is through her character and artistic expression that she is able to overcome the trauma of her childhood and evolve into the distinguished and unique individual that has captivated millions through literature. In her book, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Angelou reflects on the impact that her childhood experiences have made on the woman she has become using language and setting to depict the community that shaped her identity. Identity – a mix of self expression and self concept (Berger, 2001, p. 434). According to Kathleen Berger, a New York Psychologist and author of the book The Developing Person Throughout the Lifespan, identity is discovered and experimented with during the adolescent years and is often understood as the exploration for a “consistent understanding of one’s self” (Burger, 2011, p.434). Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, theorized that adolescence was a part of life’s fifth psychosocial crisis known as identity vs. role confusion (Berger, 2011, p.434). He theorized that this crisis was resolved by obtaining identity achievement: a process by which the individual evaluates the values and goals of their p... ... middle of paper ... ...n making the woman that Angelou is today; and through Kathleen Stassen Berger’s look at the developing individual we can dissect the influence and the formation of a self-concept using Erik Erikson’s theory of the four aspects of identity. Identity is a mix of self expression and concept. It is not just who you are, but who you have been, who you have known, and how the world has shaped you. Works Cited Berger, K. (2008). The developing person through the life span (8th Ed.). New York, NY US: Worth Publishers. Manora, Y. M. (2005). “What you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay”: Displacement, Disruption and Black Female Subjectivity in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Women’s Studies, 34(5), 359-375. doi:10.1080/00497870590964011 Moore, L. (2003). A Conversation with Maya Angelou at 75. Smithsonian, 34(1), 96. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
In her narrative, titled “Champion of the World”, the nineteenth chapter of the novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou recalls an incident of a heavyweight boxing match between an African American, Joe Louis, and a white contender. Angelou emphasizes the import of the match to the African American community to display the racism in this time period, the oppression people of color face, and the defeat they have to come to terms with whether they lose in one aspect of life or not. To achieve her purpose, Angelou uses dialogue, diction, and the the imbedding of a secondary narrative throughout the primary narrative. She creates parallelism through the use of repetition and utilizes short, staccato sentences to further emphasises her
In 1970 "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", an autobiographical novel nominated for National Book Award, is published. The main theme of the novel is Maya's struggle to survive and grow up in a complicated and harsh world. Maya is extremely young when she and her brother are sent from their parents' house to live with their grandmother and uncle in Stamps, Arkansas.
Maya Angelou was a grammy-winning author, memoirist, poet, and a civil right activist. As Maya Angelou once said “ I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” This reflects a lot on her poem Caged Bird because she will never forget how the people in her town made her feel like her feet were tied and her wings were clipped. As an African American Angelou suffered at the hands of racial prejudices and discrimination as she was growing up whether it was in her town or in her own home. In her poem Caged Bird Angelou talks about how the free bird doesn’t have a care in the world, but she also talks about how the caged bird longs to someday be free. Although Maya Angelou died as a well-known famous poet and used her knowledge and her words to overpower racial discrimination she grew up in an oppressed society because of darkness, pain, and fear.
In the novel I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou goes from a little southern black girl who wishes to be a “a long and blonde haired, light-blue eyed, white girl”, to a very mature young adult that is proud of her race. Throughout ’s (Maya’s) life she goes through many difficulties and triumphs. Some of which a person could never imagine of going through. Maya goes from being a very shy and strange black girl, to a certain and self-confident young woman. In I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, has to deal with prejudice, rape, and also the issues of abandonment in her course of becoming a mature woman.
Alice Walker and Maya Angelou are both extremely courageous writers. From each we receive a rare and poignant gift. As her book suggests, Alice Walker challenges us to search for resolution in the face of loneliness and despair. Maya Angelou, who "knows why the caged bird sings," reminds us that loneliness and despair never have the last word. She gently points us to a window of hope. Both women bless us with shades of being human.
Maya Angelou’s parent’s were divorced when she was three years old, resulting in her being relocated between family members several times. In addition to that hardship, when Angelou was only eight years old, she was left alone with her mother’s boyfriend and he raped her. Because of this experience, she chose not to speak for five years. Maya Angelou later began to speak and show her true self through poetry. Poetry is what ultimately helped her to begin physically speaking again. Maya Angelou regained the strength to speak for herself, and make a difference for her culture and women worldwide. Maya Angelou’s poetry has the power to inspire confidence within the conflicted individuals who lack the courage to speak for themselves. Maya’s intention to inspire confidence to others was best shown through her poems “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “Still I Rise,” and “Phenomenal Woman.”
Maya Angelou was an African American women who wrote about rising up and the oppressed. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou talked about a free man and an oppressed man. She went into detail that the difficulties that the written about the oppressed man was forced to face. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, Maya illustrates two aspects to the reader, she presents a free man and oppressed man.
‘Caged Bird’ is a poem written by Maya Angelou which considers the conditions of the ‘free bird’ and the ‘caged bird’. Actually this contrast between the birds enables her to express her own emotions about freedom and isolation. The poem is quite symbolic so there are various hidden messages she tries to convey about her feelings mostly indirectly.
In the novel, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, written by Maya Angelou, is the beginning of a story about a young Marguerite Johnson living in Stamps, Arkansas, stepping out into the world at a time when segregation, prejudice, and racism were all at their peak. This autobiographical novel is quite centered around the Great Depression and World War II. In chapter twelve, Maya is raped, and the themes of mistaken love, sexual identity, and theme of innocence come into play; making her question every inch of the crime and even herself.
The novel I Know why the Caged Bird Sings written by Maya Angelou is an autobiographical story about her life and the struggles she faced up to age 16. Angelou’s struggles with trying to find her true identity, coming to terms with being raped, and dealing with racism growing up in the south, which influences in her novel by forcing her to open to the audience and share her struggles with the world.
Imagine a life where each day brings the torture of being trapped in a cold, hard cage of steel, bars surrounding one and creating little to no room to move. Imagine the feeling of being held back and being forced to sit and watch what life has to offer to others! A life where opportunities are not given and hope is just a slight feeling that fades more and more with each passing day. This is the life of a caged bird described in Maya Angelou’s poem Caged Bird, but just because there are these bars restraining one’s physical self does not mean that they will restrain one’s ability to dream or stand up for themselves. Angelou's poem Caged Bird portrays the struggles that African Americans faced in the past through symbolism on two birds from
The novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings goes through the childhood of Maya Angelou as she faces the difficult realities of the early South. This novel does not do a very good job at portraying the hardships of the blacks because she
Maya Angelou chronicles the stories of the first seventeen years of her life in her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As an African-American woman, she is trapped within the cage of “masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power” (Angelou 268). Her ethnic origin and personal experience strongly influence her conception of writing, so the central themes of her works are generally about racial discrimination and the emancipation of black women in the United States. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou describes multiple female characters who defy gender stereotypes and prove society's preconceived view of women to be wrong. Through the feminist literary theory perspective, Annie Henderson, Vivian Baxter,
Erikson believed that people cannot achieve true intimacy without first having formed a solid identity as an individual. Identity is a sense of knowing who you are and where you’re going in life, resolved positively emergence of identity marks end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Feeling of being at home in one’s body, sense of knowing where one is going. Inner assuredness of anticipated recognition from those who count. Identity development is a key developmental task of adolescence and emerging adulthood.
In Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, family is dealt with in a way that is somewhat unorthodox. Maya, the autobiography’s protagonist, began her life with no relationship with and little knowledge of her mother and father. The protagonist’s guardian was her grandmother, whom she called Momma. Maya spent her early years in Stamps, Arkansas with Momma acting as the mother figure for Maya and her elder sibling Bailey. Despite having no relationship with her parents, Maya lived in a loving household with Momma, Bailey, and her disabled uncle, Willie. She was genuinely happy, and knew that she could depend on Bailey or Momma in any situation. The novel depicts Maya living without the typical nuclear family, persevering in spite of it, and making the most of the hand she was dealt.