essay about i know why the caged bird sings

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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• Poetry Foundation - "Caged Bird"
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , the first of seven autobiographical works by American writer Maya Angelou , published in 1969. The book chronicles her life from age 3 through age 16, recounting an unsettled and sometimes traumatic childhood that included rape and racism . It became one of the most widely read and taught books written by an African American woman.

The prologue describes an event in which Angelou, as a small child, is reciting a poem in church. Feeling ugly because she imagined in vain that the dress her grandmother made her would be so pretty that she would be seen as a beautiful white child, she forgets the poem and then wets her pants as she flees the church in embarrassment.

The story begins in 1931, as Maya, age three, and her elder brother, Bailey, are sent to Stamps, Arkansas , to live with their paternal grandmother, whom they call Momma, after their parents’ breakup. Momma owns the only store in the African American part of town. The children settle into life with Momma, helping her at the store and learning to read and do arithmetic. One night a former sheriff warns Momma to hide her disabled son because white men are planning revenge after a Black man “messed with” a white woman. Later a group of young white girls ridicule Momma while she stands, dignified and unmoving, outside the store. When the Great Depression hits, Momma keeps the store from going under by allowing customers to trade their rations for goods. One Christmas , Maya and Bailey receive gifts from their parents, whom they assumed to be dead. A year later their father, Daddy Bailey, arrives in a fancy car, and he takes Maya and Bailey to St. Louis to live with their mother, the beautiful Vivian.

At first they stay with Vivian’s mother and their uncles. At school, Maya and her brother are more advanced than the other students, and they are moved up a grade. Later the children move in with Vivian and her boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman begins molesting eight-year-old Maya, threatening to kill Bailey if she tells anyone. One day he rapes her, and she conceals her stained underwear under the mattress. When changing the linens, Bailey and Vivian find the garment and realize what happened. During Mr. Freeman’s trial, Maya lies when asked whether he touched her before the rape. Later Mr. Freeman is found dead, apparently having been beaten to death. Feeling guilty, Maya stops speaking to anyone except Bailey. After a few months of her silence, Maya and Bailey are sent back to Momma.

Maya is relieved to be back in Stamps, but she continues her silence. Eventually, the sophisticated Mrs. Bertha Flowers takes Maya under her wing, telling her that it is important to speak and giving her books to read aloud, and she begins talking again. At the age of 10, Maya is sent to work for a white woman, who calls her Mary rather than her name (Marguerite). Offended, Maya breaks some china in order to get fired. Later, Bailey is upset when he sees a movie starring Kay Francis because he thinks the actress looks just like Vivian, and he makes an unsuccessful attempt to return to his mother. Maya later makes her first friend, Louise Kendricks, a girl from school. During this time, Maya continues to encounter racism. When she develops cavities, Momma takes her to the white dentist who borrowed money from Momma during the Depression, but he refuses to treat the child, and they have to take a bus to the closest Black dentist. Bailey later sees the decaying corpse of a Black man pulled out of a pond, and a white man makes him help some Black men carry the body into the jail. After the incident, Momma decides to take Maya and Bailey back to their mother.

Maya and Bailey move with their mother to Oakland , California. There Maya attends a school in which she is one of only three Black students. When she is 14 years old, she is awarded a scholarship to the California Labor School, where she studies drama and dance. Vivian’s new husband, Daddy Clidell, becomes a genuine father figure to Maya.

Maya spends a summer in southern California with Daddy Bailey and his girlfriend, Dolores. Dolores and Maya do not get along. One day, Daddy Bailey takes Maya with him on a shopping trip to Mexico. Maya enjoys the excursion until she loses track of her father, who eventually returns to their car too drunk to drive. Although she has never driven before, Maya manages to drive them to the border, where she hits another car. At this point, Daddy Bailey wakes up, pacifies the other driver, and then drives the rest of the way home. Upon their return, Daddy Bailey and Dolores argue, and he walks out. Maya tries to console Dolores, but Dolores insults Vivian, leading Maya to slap her. Dolores then cuts Maya, who decides to run away. After spending a night in a junkyard, she awakens to find a community of Black, white, and Mexican runaways living there. She stays for a month and then returns to Vivian.

In the meantime, Bailey has become friends with “a group of slick street boys” and begun dating a white prostitute. At the age of 16 he leaves home, to his sister’s great sorrow. Maya browbeats the transit company into hiring her as the first female African American streetcar conductor in San Francisco . However, after spending one semester at the job, she returns to school. She later reads the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall , and, misunderstanding what lesbianism is, she begins to fear that she might be a lesbian. Though Vivian tries to reassure her, she is not assuaged , and she determines to have sex with a boy. The encounter is unpleasant, and it results in Maya’s becoming pregnant. On Bailey’s advice, she keeps the news to herself and returns to school. After graduating from high school , Maya tells Vivian and Daddy Clidell, who are fully supportive. After Guy is born, Vivian assures Maya that she will be a good mother.

The book’s title came from the poem “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar . Against the backdrop of racial tensions in the South , Angelou confronted the traumatic events of her childhood and explored the evolution of her strong identity as an African American woman. Her individual and cultural feelings of displacement were mediated through her passion for literature, which proved both healing and empowering.

After the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. , Angelou was inspired by a meeting with writer James Baldwin and cartoonist Jules Feiffer to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as a way of dealing with the death of her friend and to draw attention to her own personal struggles with racism. The book was immediately popular and remained on best-seller lists for two years. Angelou cowrote the screenplay for the 1979 television movie version of the story, which starred Esther Rolle as Momma and Diahann Carroll as Vivian.

By Maya Angelou

‘Caged Bird’, or ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ as the poem is sometimes referred to, by Maya Angelou, is arguably one of the most moving and eye-opening poems ever written.

Maya Angelou

Nationality: American

She's also known for her autobiographical works.

Key Poem Information

Unlock more with Poetry +

Central Message: Freedom versus oppression and resilient hope.

Themes: Desire , Disappointment , Dreams , Identity , Journey

Speaker: Unknown

Emotions Evoked: Anger , Bravery , Compassion , Fear , Freedom , Frustration , Grief , Hope , Pain , Passion , Resilience , Sadness , Worry

Poetic Form: Free Verse

Time Period: 20th Century

'Caged Bird' is a quintessential Maya Angelou poem, beautifully capturing the struggle between feeling trapped and yearning for freedom.

Poem Analyzed by Allisa Corfman

Degree in Secondary Education/English and Teacher of World Literature and Composition

Angelou also wrote an autobiography with a similar title, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . This title had great significance to Angelou, as it was the title of her entire life story. In her autobiography, she talked about the struggle of being a Black author and poet. She often felt that her words were not heard because of the color of her skin and sought to express her experience and that of others in her contemporary moment through t he lines of this text.

Before reading ‘Caged Bird’ by Maya Angelou, consider the following tips:

• Understand that Angelou wrote during the Civil Rights Movement, drawing from her experiences as an African American woman.
• Look for themes of freedom, oppression, and resilience. The contrasting images of the free and caged birds highlight these ideas.
• Pay attention to the symbolism of the birds. The free bird represents unrestricted freedom, while the caged bird embodies confinement and longing.
• Note the emotional tone in the caged bird’s song, which combines sorrow and hope, reflecting deep-seated yearning.
• While rooted in specific historical contexts, consider the poem's broader existential themes about human nature and the quest for liberation.

Explore Caged Bird

• 3 Structure and Form
• 4 Literary Devices
• 5 Caged Bird Metaphor
• 6 Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
• 8 Similar Poetry

‘Caged Bird’ by Maya Angelou is an incredibly important poem in which the poet describes the experience of two different birds, one free and one caged.

The free bird flies around the wind currents, feeling like the sky belongs to him. On the other hand, the caged bird can barely move in its prison. It’s angry and frustrating. Its wings are clipped, and its feet are tied together. All it can do is sing fearfully of what it wants and does not know. It sings for its freedom, and everyone, even far distant, can hear its song.

All the while, the free bird is focused on the breeze, the sounds the trees make, and the words in the ground he’s planning on eating. Once more, the speaker reiterates the fact that the bird feels as though it owns the sky. The poem concludes with the caged bird singing once more as the poet repeats the third stanza in its entirety.

The Poem Analysis Take

Expert Insights by Angel Nicolin Suyman

Bachelor of Secondary Education in English and M.A. in English

While I interpret this poem as a clear metaphor for racial oppression, I also feel that the poem transcends specific socio-political contexts to explore existential themes. The caged bird's song might symbolize the universal human condition, trapped by life's inherent limitations yet perpetually yearning for transcendence.

‘Caged Bird’  is filled with powerful themes. These include racial oppression, freedom/captivity, and happiness/sorrow. These themes are all wrapped together in  ‘Caged Bird’  through Angelou’s depiction of the two birds, one free and one caged.

The caged bird is an extended metaphor for the Black community in America and worldwide. Angelou is alluding to the lived experience of millions of men, women, and children since the beginning of time and the variety of oppressive tactics, whether physical, mental, or economic, employed by those in power.

Black men, women, and children see “through…bars” while the free bird sores in the sky. The bird sings from a place of sadness rather than joy to convey a broader history of sorrow.

Structure and Form

‘Caged Bird’  by Maya Angelou is a six-stanza poem that is separated into stanzas that range in length. Angelou chose to write the poem in free verse . This means that there is no single rhyme scheme or metrical pattern that unites all the lines. But, there are some examples of an iambic meter .

This adds to the overall musicality of the poem. Iambs are also generally referred to as “rising” feet when the second syllable is stressed. This plays into the content of the caged bird and the free bird. Additionally, readers should take note of the instances in which the poet makes use of half-rhyme .

Literary Devices

Angelou makes use of several literary devices in ‘ Caged Bird.’ These include but are not limited to:

• Alliteration : another form of repetition , but one that is solely focused on the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of multiple words. For example, “sun” and “sky” at the end of stanza one and “cage / can” in lines three and four of stanza two.
• Enjambment : another important literary device that’s also quite common in contemporary poetry. It appears when a poet cuts off a sentence or phrase with a line break before its natural stopping point. For example, the transition between lines one and two of the first stanza and lines three and four of the second stanza.
• Repetition : is seen throughout the poem but most prominently in the structure of the stanzas and the continual reference to the “free bird” and “caged bird.” One of the best examples is seen in the sixth stanza, in which the poet repeats the entire third stanza.
• Symbolism : the use of an image to represent something else. In this case, the caged bird symbolizes the confined and oppressed African American community in the United States.
• Irony : occurs when an outcome is different than expected. For example, it is ironic that the free bird isn’t singing, but the caged bird is.

Caged Bird Metaphor

In Maya Angelou’s ‘Caged Bird,’ the poet uses two bird metaphors . The free bird symbolizes white Americans or all free people who enjoy equal rights. The caged bird is a metaphor for/symbolizes oppressed Black Americans who are kept captive through racist policies.

Analysis, Stanza by Stanza

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind    and floats downstream    till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.

In the first stanza, Maya Angelou refers to nature. She describes how “a free bird leaps on the back of the wind.” She describes the bird’s flight against the orange sky. The free bird has the right “to claim the sky.” The way she describes the “orange sun rays” gives the reader an appreciation for the natural beauty of the sky, and her description of how the bird “dips his wing” helps the reader to appreciate the bird in his natural habitat enjoying his freedom.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage (…) his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

This stanza of ‘ Caged Bird’ contrasts sharply with the first. By using the word “but” to begin this stanza, the speaker prepares the reader for this contrast . Then she describes the “bird that stalks his narrow cage.” The tone is immediately and drastically changed from peaceful, satisfied, and joyful to one that is dark, unnerving, and even frustrating. She describes that this caged first “can seldom see through his bars of rage.”

While the free bird enjoys the full sky, the caged bird rarely even gets a glimpse of the sky. She claims “his wings are clipped, and his feet are tied.” Text from her autobiography reveals that Angelou often felt this way in life. She felt restricted from enjoying the freedom that should have been her right as a human being. The speaker then reveals that these are the very reasons the bird “opens his throat to sing.”

The author felt this way in her own life. She wrote and sang and danced because it was her way of expressing her longing for freedom.

Stanza Three

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill (…) for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The third stanza reverts back to the free bird, further cementing the difference between the free bird and the caged bird in the readers’ minds. She writes that a “free bird thinks of another breeze” that he can enjoy the “sighing trees” and be free to find his own food. The tone with which she writes the first and third stanzas so sharply contrasts with the second stanza that readers can feel the difference. The first and third stanzas give the reader a sense of ecstasy and thrill, making the second stanza seem all the more droll and even oppressive.

Stanza Four

The free bird thinks of another breeze (…) and he names the sky his own

The fourth stanza of ‘ Caged Bird’  continues the parallel between the free bird and the caged bird. The first line serves to starkly contrast the last line in the third stanza. It is dark and daunting. The reality of the life of the caged bird is revealed in this line. 

Mentioning of ‘fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn brings around a predatorial/prey juxtaposition too. It would be the worms that would be scared for their life, losing freedom as the birds feed upon such prey. However, with a bird entrapped by a cage, the worms are the ones that have the freedom, compared to the caged bird.

Stanza Five

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams (…) so he opens his throat to sing.

That bird “stands on the grave of dreams.” This reveals the author’s feelings about her own dreams. She has so many dreams that have died because she was never given the freedom to achieve all that her white counterparts could . Discrimination and racism made up her cage, and although she sang, she felt her voice was not heard in the wide world but only by those nearest her cage. The second line of this stanza is not only dark but even frightening.

The speaker describes the bird’s cries as “shouts on a nightmare scream.” At this point, the caged bird is so despondent in his life of captivity that his screams are like that of someone having a nightmare. The author then repeats these lines:

His wings are clipped and his feet are tied So he opens his throat to sing.

Reaffirming the idea that the bird opens his mouth to sing because his desire for freedom and his desire to express himself cannot be contained.

This last stanza focuses on the caged bird yet again. The author implies that even though the caged bird may have never experienced true freedom, deep down, that bird still knows it was created to be free. Although freedom, to the caged bird, is “fearful” because it is “unknown,” he still sings “a fearful trill” because he still longed for freedom.

Here, the speaker reveals that his cry for freedom is “heard on the distant hill.” This parallels to the author and her cry for freedom in the form of equality. She feels her cries are heard, but only as soft background noise. She still feels that she is caged and that although she sings, her cries are heard only as a distant noise.

The last line states, “For the caged bird sings of freedom.” With this, the speaker implies that although the caged bird may never have experienced freedom, he still sings of it because he was created for freedom. This is paralleled to the African American struggle in Maya Angelou’s time.

She feels that Black Americans wrote and sang and danced and cried out for the freedom they deserved, but they were only heard as a distant voice. Yet, this would not stop them from crying out for freedom and equality because they knew they were made for freedom, and they would not relent until they were given their rights as human beings to enjoy the freedom they were created to enjoy.

‘Caged Bird’ by Maya Angelou is about the two different experiences of two birds. One is caged and suffers from its lack of freedom, while the other is free to do as it pleases. The caged bird sings to cope with its confinement.

The caged bird symbolizes the desire to be free. Specifically, the African American community’s efforts to achieve equality in every part of life and break free from the confines of personal and institutional racism.

‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ‘ or ‘Caged Bird’ expresses the importance of freedom. She compares the plight of a caged bird to the suffering of the African American community.

The lack of freedom in ‘Caged Bird’ inspires the caged bird to sing while the free bird does not. Its desperate cry is not a happy one but it is the only way the bird can cope with being locked up.

The caged bird standing on a grave of dreams symbolizes the entire history of cruelty and confinement inflicted upon the African American community and other marginalized communities throughout history.

Similar Poetry

Readers who enjoyed  ‘Caged Bird’  should also consider reading some other Maya Angelou poems . These include:

•   ‘ Phenomenal Woman ‘ – defies the stereotypes women often face today. It is a poem filled with strength and determination.
• ‘ Still I Rise ‘  –  describes, through positive and joyful language, a speaker’s allure as a woman. She has irresistibly beautiful features and a strength that makes her stand out.
• ‘ Life Doesn’t Frighten Me ‘ – is a simple poem that describes the fears, or lack thereof, that a child speaker has. 

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20th century, disappointment, frustration, african americans, black lives matter, discrimination, life struggles, overcoming adversity, perseverance, personification, women's rights, women's strength.

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good analysis .it’s very helpful for literature students

Thank you. That’s our goal.

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Corfman, Allisa. "Caged Bird by Maya Angelou". Poem Analysis , https://poemanalysis.com/maya-angelou/caged-bird/ . Accessed 14 August 2024.

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya angelou.

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Race, Inequality, and Identity

Young Marguerite grows up in the segregated American south; but I Know why the Caged Bird Sings is not simply an investigation of the history and effects of segregation: it is an incisive and honest examination of race, inequality, and identity.

Marguerite is taught by her grandmother to fear and avoid white people, and to think of them as godless, and not to be trusted. At the same time, she teaches her grandchildren never to…

Sex, Gender and Sexuality

This memoir is also an account of how sex and gender influence experience and identity. Marguerite recognizes that being a girl is a kind of disadvantage, and wishes occasionally that she had been born a boy. The novels she reads have men and boys as their heroes and protagonists, so she believes that to be a hero one must be male. Marguerite also feels pressure to be feminine and attractive, and is tormented by her…

Marguerite finds refuge in fiction, poetry, and language itself. The book is in many ways an account of how Maya Angelou came to be a poet, and her love of language plays a central role.

Marguerite is a quiet child, and especially after her assault, learns to take refuge in the sound and quality of others’ speech. She is told by her Uncles in St. Louis that it is okay if she is ugly so…

Religion also plays a complex role in Marguerite’s upbringing—though the church is a kind of sanctuary for the adults in the book, Marguerite is often intimidated by the church and associates it with punishment.

The importance of religion to black southerners is made clear early in the book. The passion of many adults in Marguerite’s church service embarrasses her; but adults see the church as a sanctuary for their displaced and disenfranchised people. The revivalist…

The memoir explores the complexity of familial bonds and the importance of family to a person’s experiences and identity. Maya and Bailey ’s relationship is in many ways at the center of the book. Young Marguerite loves her brother so dearly and trusts him so implicitly that she confides in him first about her attack. The children often have to cope with feelings of abandonment since they were sent away by their parents to live…

Home and Displacement

The memoir also explores the idea of home and the pain and confusion of displacement, and in doing so for the particular experience of Maya Angelou also more broadly portrays these issues with respect to the history and experience of black Americans.

Marguerite is sent away from her mother and father to live with her grandmother at a young age; one of her earliest memories is of displacement, of being sent away from her home…

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou

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Maya angelou and i know why the caged bird sings anonymous college, i know why the caged bird sings.

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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

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Summary and Study Guide

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , a groundbreaking work in Black women’s writing, is an autobiography depicting the childhood and adolescence of American writer Maya Angelou. It is the first volume of Angelou’s seven-volume autobiography. The book was nominated for a 1970 National Book Award, and in 1979, it was adapted into a film.

Plot Summary

The memoir opens in 1931 when a three-year-old Maya Johnson arrives in Stamps, Arkansas, along with her four-year-old brother Bailey. Their parents, recently divorced, sent the siblings to the small Southern town to live with their grandmother, Momma Henderson . Momma owns a General Store in the Black part of Stamps and runs it with the help of her disabled son, Uncle Willie . From an early age, Maya struggles with the feelings of self-doubt and abandonment and finds solace in books and her brother’s company. More mischievous than his sister, Bailey fills their time with new adventures and becomes Maya’s best friend and confidante.

The town of Stamps is highly segregated, and Maya has minimal contact with the white population, but nevertheless, she regularly witnesses instances of racism. When she watches Momma Henderson hide Uncle Willie from the Ku Klux Klan and sees the white neighborhood girls talk down to her grandmother, Maya is overwhelmed with a strong sense of injustice.

Maya and Bailey adjust to their life in Stamps, and Momma Henderson becomes a strong role model for the siblings. One day, without warning, their father arrives in Stamps, and after spending some time in the town, takes the children to St. Louis to live with their mother, Vivian Baxter . She works at gambling parlors and doesn’t spend much time with Maya and Bailey, but both children admire her glamorous lifestyle, which is very different from Momma Henderson’s modest, conservative behavior. When Maya is eight years old, Vivian’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman , sexually abuses and rapes Maya. He threatens to kill Bailey if the girl tells anyone, so she keeps silent, but when her mother eventually finds out, Mr. Freeman is taken to court. Although he is found guilty of the crime, his lawyer manages to get him released the very same day, but soon afterward, Mr. Freeman is murdered. Overwhelmed with the feelings of shock and guilt, Maya becomes withdrawn and stops talking, and Vivian sends the children back to Stamps.

Under the care of her grandmother, Maya slowly recovers. The girl befriends Mrs. Flowers, an educated woman who rekindles Maya’s love for books. Maya begins to enjoy her schoolwork and spends all her free time reading. Maya sheds some of her insecurities and makes a new friend, a girl named Louise, who helps her navigate her first romances and life at school. When Maya’s eighth-grade graduation comes, she is proud of her academic achievements and hopeful about her future.

Worried about the racial intolerance of Stamps, Momma Henderson takes the children back to California. Maya is thirteen when she and Bailey move to San Francisco to live with their mother, who has remarried. They grow fond of their new stepfather, Daddy Clidell , and admire their mother’s free spirit. With the beginning of World War II, the social fabric of San Francisco begins to alter, and in this atmosphere of change, Maya finally begins to feel at home. Her birth father, Bailey Senior , invites Maya to spend summer with him in southern California. Soon after joining him and his girlfriend Dolores in their trailer park, Maya realizes that he is nothing like the father from her fantasies. When during a brawl, Dolores physically attacks Maya, the girl leaves and finds herself homeless. She wonders into a junkyard where she meets a group of homeless teenagers and joins them for a while, working and living alongside them. Their unquestioning acceptance boosts Maya’s self-esteem, and the exposure to different people and experiences profoundly changes her thinking.

Upon her return to San Francisco, Maya finds out that she has grown apart from her brother. She decides to get a job as a streetcar operator. There is a policy forbidding Black people from having such jobs, but Maya perseveres and becomes the first female Black streetcar operator in San Francisco. As she starts her senior year of high school, she becomes pregnant. Maya follows Bailey’s advice and doesn’t tell her mother and stepfather until after her graduation. Three weeks later, she gives birth to a son, marking her passage from adolescence into adulthood. 

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