Summary of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya recalls an Easter Sunday at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Arkansas. Her mother makes her a special Easter dress from lavender taffeta, and Maya thinks the dress will make her look like the blond-haired blue-eyed movie star that she wishes, deep down, to be. But, the dress turns out to be drab and ugly, as Maya laments that she is black, and unattractive as well. She leaves her church pew to go to the bathroom, and doesn't make it; she runs from the church, ashamed, but glad to be out of church and away from the children who torment her, and make her childhood even harder than it already is.
Analysis:
One of the main themes of this chapter is race and appearance; Maya already establishes that she wanted to be a movie-star looking white girl as a child, and tried to deny her real appearance. Connected with the idea of race is beauty, as Maya describes images of blond hair and blue eyes as the paragon of beauty, and says her appearance is merely a "black ugly dream" that she will wake out of.
Maya seems to have been an imaginative child, as she envisions her "head [bursting] like a dropped watermelon" from trying to hold her bladder. Angelou shows a talent for using images to explain and clarify feelings, and employing her descriptive powers to make even mundane incidents very vivid.
This autobiography, which covers Maya's life from age 3 to age 16, is often considered a bildungsroman since it is primarily a tale of youth and growing into young adulthood. However, unlike a typical, novel-form bildungsroman, the story does not end with the achievement of adulthood; Angelou continues to write about her life in four other volumes, all addressing her life chronologically from her childhood to the accomplishments of her adulthood. It is important to keep in mind that this is an autobiography, rather than a novel, and that the narrator and the author are indeed one and the same, and the events described in the book are intended to relate a very personal portrait of a person's life.
Chapter 1:
Summary:
Maya says that when she was three years old and her brother was four, they were sent from their father in California to their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. They were eventually embraced by the town, and lived at the back of the store that their grandmother and uncle owned and ran. ...
... middle of paper ...
...al and flawed.
The images and words chosen to represent St. Louis tell of the children's fear of this new place, and their apprehension at being taken to live with someone they don't know. The "crowded-together, soot-covered buildings" are completely alien, and a bit bleak to them. They may have been driving "to Hell" for all the children knew, with their uncertainty and fear coloring the strange landscape. She begins to believe in "Grownups' Betrayal," as again they are being let down by their father; her tone reveals her hurt and bitterness at being reclaimed by their father, only to be sent away once again.
Angelou describes her mother as being like "a hurricane in its perfect power," or "the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow"; these metaphors convey that Maya's mother is a flawless work of nature, vibrant, powerful, and very beautiful. Maya seems to admire her from afar, too, like you would admire a rainbow from afar; but the instant power of the children's love for her is encapsulated in the two cliched phrases "struck dumb" and "love at first sight." Although Maya might feel a bit distant from her mother, nevertheless the love she feels brings them a little closer.
This literary critique was found on the Bryant Library database. It talks about how well Maya conveys her message to her readers as well as portraying vivid scenes in her reader’s minds’. Maya’s sense of story and her passionate desire to overcome obstacles and strive for greatness and self-appreciation is what makes Maya an outlier. Living in America, Angelou believed that African American as a whole must find emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sustenance through reverting back to their “home” of Africa. According to Maya, “Home” was the best place to capture a sense of family, past, and tradition. When it comes to Maya’s works of literature, her novels seems to be more critically acclaimed then her poetry. With that being said, Angelou pursues harsh social and political issues involving African American in her poems. Some of these themes are the struggle for civil rights in America and Africa, the feminist movement, Maya’s relationship with her son, and her awareness of the difficulties of living in America's struggling classes. Nevertheless, in all of Maya’s works of literature she is able to “harness the power of the word” through an extraordinary understanding of the language and events she uses and went through. Reading this critique made me have a better understanding of the process Maya went through in order to illustrate her life to her readers. It was not just sitting down with a pen and paper and just writing thoughts down. It was really, Maya being able to perfect something that she c...
Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. After her parents’ divorce, Maya Angelou and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother, in Stamps, a poor section of Arkansas (Handford). Her grandmother was very religious; she made sure they went to church. According to Salem Press, Angelou loved her close relationship with her brother Bailey, who gave her the name “Maya.” At a young age Angelou was a victim of violence. Angelou was raped by a friend of her mother during one of her visits in St. Louis. Later after her mother’s brothers found out about the rape, they killed the man(Poets.org). Angelou felt that she had caused the man’s death by telling her mother what happened, so she refused to speak for five years about her rape. With the encouragement from a well-educated black woman from Stamps, Mrs. Flowers, she regained her voice. With the help of Mrs. Flowers Angelou began to read the works of, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare and also Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Maya Angelou’s poem is structured in a quatrain format. The first few paragraphs are set out in such a way that it explains to us why she is rising; the poem compromises of a stanza of four lines, each of the same length.
Maya Angelou uses herself to show how a black girl perceives herself in white society, she uses Mr. Freeman to show how traumatic events affect one self’s perception, and lastly, she utilizes setting to show how a person’s location impacts their identity. Maya Angelou teaches that challenges are faced by everybody, even though some more than others. Nevertheless, these challenges should not keep people down. Obstacles are in place, so they are overcome and in that is how identity and individuality are found. For those who are African-American women, their race and gender have been their greatest challenge, but it can be
This tone can be seen at the start of each stanza with, ‘I say’. This is a cue that Maya is openly speaking her mind on how phenomenal women are those who be themselves and stick to their own image. The repetition of, ‘I say’, is followed by her point of view on her own physique and why she believes that she is beautiful in her own unique way. This confidence tone is directly said by Maya towards the end of the poem, ‘Now you understand why my head’s not bowed, I don’t shout or jump about or have to talk real loud when you see me passing it ought to make you proud’. Through this line Angelou conveys that she doesn’t let criticism define who she is because she doesn’t need anyone else’s opinions to gain attention, it is her confidence and expression of womanliness in herself, that attracts the attention.
When you ask any high school senior the question, do you want to receive a higher education, the answer in more recent times has become yes. Why? Because more often times than not higher education to a high school senior means a chance at success. But choosing the right college depends on how one defines this term. The textbook definition of success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. So then the question becomes, what is the purpose of higher education? Is it to prepare us for one specific career? Or is it for us to receive a more vast and worldly education with which we can find both our passion and infinite opportunities? The first option can be found at any large career-oriented university. The second can be found at a liberal arts college. In fact, the second option is what many incoming high school seniors are and should be gravitating towards, after much research has come out indicating that post-undergraduate students have been more “successful” coming from a liberal arts college than from a large research university. In fact, the idea that liberal arts colleges are the “hidden ivy league” is becoming more popular in society today.
According to the documentary “Killing Us Softly 4,” average Americans are exposed to approximately 3,000 advertisements a day. Advertisements (hereafter referred to as ads) are everywhere, and they are inevitable. Sex appeal is one of the major advertising techniques that all types of media widely use. Many advertisements, thus, use sex appeal to attract consumers; however, many ads involve gender behavior patterns that give viewers the wrong idea about gender roles or ideal standards of beauty and deliver sexist messages about women in a degrading manner. This paper will examine the stereotypical and unrealistic portrayal of women in both men and women’s magazines: GQ and Glamour.
Although it is widely accepted that the act of designing involves a significant amount of problem solving activity, it should be acknowledged that the role of the designer goes well beyond that of merely applying his or her own skills and knowledge to the design problem. The ‘problem solving’ paradigm, which was introduced in the 1960’s, has successfully made a great impact on the world, as it enabled the ‘systemization of existing design process models, tools, methods and techniques, and helped to link them to models of problem solving in fields outside of design’ (Do...
As a child, Maya was a very quiet and passive girl who rarely spoke her mind. When she was younger, a couple of “powhitetrash” girls went into her grandmother’s store and harassed her. Maya was so scared that all she could do was curl herself up into a small corner and start crying; unable to stick up to those girls. However, her sudden development of courage is exemplified when she goes to visit her father in California. Maya gets into an argument with her father’s girlfriend, Dolores, and apparently, Dolores ends up calling Maya’s mother a whore. The “new” Maya, filled with anger, responded by slapping Dolores across the face. The small, reticent child had turned into a courageous, young woman.
The business environment has a bearing on all these integral and interrelated elements. Business dynamics is dependent on environmental dynamics. It is very important to formulate the business strategy thatshould be defined to achieve a perfect organization-environment fit. Also the vision, mission, objectives of an organization should be designed on the basis of assessment of an environment.Relation of business organization and its environment is obvious from the point ofanalysis ofstrengths, weakness, opportunity and threats of business. Organizationenvironment consists of internal environment and external environment. Internalenvironment factors are easily controllable and manage in the organization. Externalenvironment factors are uncontrollable factors due to changes in the legal, social,economic, and technical in business enterprise. External environment offers wide rangeof opportunities, problems, threats and pressures and thereby influence the structureof the business enterprise and its functions. Business enterprise can be treated assubsystem for drawing certain inputs of resource, information and values extractingfrom the external environmental system. These things transform into outputs inthe form of products and services, goals and satisfactions and exchange of properideas and it transmits to business
Maya Angelou conveys a spirit of self-esteem through her images of acceptance. She embraces who she is and revels in her
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