Maya Angelou Personification

Authors usually write about things they have experienced. This how Maya Angelou became an award winning author for her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou was born in 1928 and was a strong activist in the civil rights movement. She grew up in the Arkansas, a place that strongly experienced firsthand racial prejudices and discrimination. Angelou not only faced discrimination for being African American, but was also sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend. After the assault, Angelou’s uncle was so enraged, he killed the man. After the murder, she was left so traumatized so she remained mute for 5 years. When Angelou was older her career as a performer began to take off, so she went to pursue her career abroad. Once returning

For example, in lines 5 through 7, Angelou use imagery to describe the sky the free bird gets to fly through: “and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares the claim the sky”. By incorporating this detail about the sun and the sky, it adds depth the the scene and creates dimension. This allows the audience to really sense the beauty the free bird gets to experience. Angelou also uses personification to add depth to the poem: “his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing” (11). Cage bars can’t really be angry and birds can’t really sings, but by including these touches of personification it creates emotion and action to the poem. The audience can picture a bird chirping a tune making music, one note at a time to create a song. The most interesting literary device Angelou includes is the oxymoron added to line 27, “But a caged bird stand on the grave of dreams”. By incorporating this oxymoron, Angelou is adding a reference to death. This contradicting sentence refers to dreams being crushed and not being fulfilled. All of these literary devices Angelou incorporates throughout the poem helps create more dimension to get the message