Maya Angelou's Caged Bird

“Caged Bird” is a poem written by Maya Angelou where she juxtaposes between the free bird and the caged bird, portraying the immenseness of their differences; however, the poem is so much more than this comparison between two birds. When we dig deeper into the words which were carefully selected in order to create this poem, we can identify the powerful hidden message behind it. The message behind this poem is actually about racism and gender roles, and it seems that Maya Angelou is trying to bring racial issues to the light by using powerful metaphors and compares the white community, the “free bird”, versus the black community, the “caged bird”. The words that are used in this poem can help distinguish these differences between the two communities where the free bird is associated with pleasant, flowing words such as “floats,” “sun rays” and “sighing trees”; whereas the words associated with the caged bird are harsh sounding, like “clipped,” “grave” and “fearful trill.” The caged bird sings repeatedly throughout the poem, which can be seen as a form of desperate self-expression as the caged bird, in this case a black person, doesn’t know how to escape the prison of racism. I will discuss this poem further with the help of the claims of two authors we have studied in class, Bell Hooks in “Black Looks: Race and Representation” and Percy Bysshe Shelley in “A Defense of Poetry”.

The way that Maya Angelou describes the caged bird and the free bird creates a clear contrast