Rhetorical Analysis: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings In her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelo commemorates and admires strong independent black women and strives to become a well-educated woman herself. Through the use of visual imagery, Angelou describes Mrs. Flowers as a refined black woman to convey to the audience a feeling of pride and recognition for all sophisticated black women and a sense of empathy for Maya. Maya compares Mrs. Flowers to the “women in English novels” who had the luxury to sit “in front of roaring fireplaces” and drink “tea incessantly from silver trays” (93). The visual description of the “fireplace” and “tea” demonstrates to the reader the value that white women have in this society. Maya Angelou
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
Crucial Capital In America, living an adequate life is dependent on having sufficient financial capital. Having money allows Americans to live successful lives. Because money is such a necessity, a large emphasis is placed on doing what needs to be done in order to gain such capital. In "Birds and Bees?
With the use of these symbols, the author showed how the unfair treatment of women at the time, made it difficult for women to secede and break free from their husbands in the 20th century. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters found Mrs. Wright’s cage and pondered about whether or not she had a bird. Mrs. Hale said, “Maybe she did. She used to sing really pretty well herself.” The singing bird resembles Minnie Foster, caught in Mrs. Wrights cage, surrounded by an atmosphere that represents her miserable life, caged up by her husband, the one who has leverage over her joy, restricting her from blooming.
From the beginning of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou continuously talks about her grandmother, Annie Henderson, as a woman she looks up to and would consider her main mother figure, which is why she calls her Momma. She is described as a hardworking and well viewed black woman in Stamps, for example Momma was addressed as Mrs., “The judge had really made a gaffe calling a Negro woman Mrs…” But this is not the only reason people look up to her; she is also the owner of a successful store, this is a big accomplishment being a black woman which proves to show her hardwork and dedication. Along with being successful in the business world she is also a very religious person with an unshakable faith. She raises Maya and Bailey to be
The incidents with Aunt Helen, along with the experiences of other characters in the book, allow for a comparison to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this biography, Angelou’s experience with rape and sexual abuse plays a large role in the rest of her life. It impacts her choices, her emotions, and her general experience of life and its challenges (Angelou, 2009). In contrast, Charlie blocks his encounters with sexual abuse to the point of not even remembering that they happened (Chboksy, 1999). In the same book, Sam goes through similar experiences and again reacts differently.
The challenge of banning books with sensitive material is understandable, but also shouldn’t be done depending on the book. Using I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as an example of why novels with sensitive material shouldn’t be banned, the reasons are going to be discussed in the following body paragraphs. Along with the opposite viewpoint of why books with sensitive material should be banned. Critical issues can be noticed in multiple novels with sensitive material, everyone chooses whether or not they want to read it or not, no one is forcing them to. Being able to read and understand sensitive material is a good component to growing new perspectives, and can also bring awareness to the material mentioned from the book.
People throughout their lives are constantly discovering who they are and who they want to grow into. The same statement accurately describes Maya Johnson, a strong woman who wrote about her life in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As a little girl, her mother’s ex-boyfriend raped and she had to rediscover herself whilst navigating through the grim veil of trauma - a process that burdened her for many years. Throughout her life, she encountered many different people, some good, others bad, but they each helped her eventually discover her identity. ‘Identity’ is how people define themselves as a human being, and, therefore, nobody else can dictate it.
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.
She shows us that despite the injustices that may occur, there will always be victory for those who truly deserve it. Maya Angelou's perspective as a young African American girl is described in Chapter 19 of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, titled Champion of the World. Her community is gathered to support Joe Louis, the former champion, in a boxing match that determines if he'll continue being champion or not. As the story progresses in her grandmother's and uncle’s store, the tone transforms from hopeful to defeated, to triumphant.
In Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, Amir watches his servent-friend Hassan get raped, all while doing nothing to help his friend. Amir has multiple chances to redeem himself in the following weeks, yet he decides not to tell anybody about what happened to Hassan. This leads to a feeling of guilt building up in Hassan. This feeling of guilt becomes a positive force in Amir’s life, as Hosseini illustrates a life of positivity in Amir’s attempt to redeem himself and rid himself of his guilt. Soon after Amir witnesses Hassan’s rape, the guilt he feels influences him to avoid Hassan while at their home.
The power of any person’s voice can bring about great changes, whether for good or for evil. In the book of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou demonstrates how her voice has power, yet more in certain places than others. In the three main places that Maya visits in the story, California is an Eden and Missouri is an exile because of the power of her voice over her sexual experiences and the power of her voice in [something]. In Missouri, Maya’s voice has no influence over who she will have sex with and if she will have sex, while her voice has influence in California. For example, while in Missouri, the boyfriend of Maya's mother threatens her to keep quiet about having sex, saying, “If you scream, I’m gonna kill you.
Maya Angelou recalls the first seventeen years of her life, discussing her unsettling childhood in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maya and Bailey were sent from California to the segregated South to live with their grandmother, Momma. At the age of eight, Maya went to stay with her mother in St. Louis, where she was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. Maya confronts these traumatic events of her childhood and explores the evolution of her own strong identity. Her individual and cultural feelings of displacement, caused by these incidents of sexual abuse, are mediated through her love for literature.
Although the situation about racism in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is the same as the first novel, the dynamic of it all is entirely flipped. The main character, Maya, lives with her brother, Bailey, grandmother,
“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.
In the poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, both portray captive birds that sing. However in “Sympathy”, the bird pleads with god for freedom, whereas in “Caged Bird” the captive bird calls for help from a free bird. In “Sympathy” the bird knows what freedom feels like since there was a time where the bird was once free, but now is trapped. In the first stanza the use of imagery revealed how freedom felt before the bird was caged.