Caged Bird
By Maya Angelou
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.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
Maya Angelou’s highly romantic “Caged Bird” first appeared in the collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?in 1983. Inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy,” Angelou contrasts the struggles of a bird attempting to rise above the limitations of adverse surroundings with the flight of a bird that is free. She seeks to create in the reader sentiment toward the plight of the misused, captured creature—a symbol of downtrodden African Americans and their experiences.
The first two stanzas contrast two birds. Lines 1 through 7 describe the actions of a bird that is free; it interacts with nature and “dares to claim the sky.” The second stanza (lines 8 through 14) tells of a captured bird that must endure clipped wings, tied feet, and bars of rage; yet he still opens his throat and sings.
The third and fifth stanzas are identical. Lines 2, 4, and 6 and lines 5 and 7 of these identical stanzas rhyme. This repeated verse elaborates on the song of freedom trilled by the caged bird; though his heart is fearful and his longings unmet, the bird continues to sing of liberty. The fourth stanza continues the comparison of two birds, the caged and the free. The free bird enjoys the breeze, the trees, the winds, the lawn, the sky, and the fat worms; the caged bird with his wings still clipped and his feet still tied continues, nevertheless, to open his throat and sing. Like the refrain of a hymn, the fifth and final stanza is a reiteration.
Angelou’s characterization of a bird that is free (first and fourth stanzas) provides an effective contrast with the bird that is caged (second, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas). The sentiment that Angelou evokes in the reader is suggestive of Dunbar’s inspirational poem.
Any analysis of “Caged Bird” must begin with the title. The reader knows immediately from the words “Caged Bird” that the story will necessarily involve the restrictions imposed by a cage on the bird within its bars. Dunbar’s “Sympathy” gave Angelou both the inspiration and the title not only for this poem and but also for her first autobiographical book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970); these two works by Angelou celebrate her survival and that of all African Americans in oppression.
Evident in “Caged Bird” are two traditional literary themes: reversal of fortune and survival of the unfittest. By presenting the free bird before depicting the caged bird, Angelou helps the reader visualize what the caged bird must have been like before its capture; the description of the two contrasting environments helps the reader feel the sense of loss of the captured bird because of its reversed fate. Even with its clipped wings, tied feet, narrow quarters, and bars of rage, however, the fragile, caged bird is still able to survive and to soar again through its song; this imprisoned bird truly epitomizes the survival of the unfittest, the major theme in the verse.
These contrasting environments—the freedom of the open world and the restrictive surroundings of the caged bird—create the setting for the poem. The reader can feel the breeze, see the sun, imagine the rich feast of fat worms, and hear the sighing trees of the world of the free creature; in contrast, the reader feels the fear and restricted movement, sees the bars, imagines the wants, and hears the song of the imprisoned bird.
Characterization is important to “Caged Bird.” An important way of revealing the character of the caged animal is to pit the exploits of the bird that is free against the stalking of the penned animal; the reader is able to experience the deprivation of the confined creature and the ecstasy of the free one. A description of the shackled feet, small quarters, and clipped wings acquaints the reader with the physical pain that the prisoner has had to endure; the word “fear” conveys its emotional plight. The most significant characteristic of the manacled creature, however, is its singing despite its fear; this song divulges its hope and its inner strength. The reader’s own throat is closed with emotion as the bird opens its throat in song, its reaction to the indignities and its way to transcend the harsh environment.
The bird’s life reflects more than submission and mere survival. The harsh and painful aspects of the caged bird’s existence do not take away its dignity, and the physical and psychological pain do not destroy its style; the bird continues to know the source of its strength and to use its means of expression—song—to pray and to rebuild its life. The melody signifies the ability of the bird to tap its internal, creative resources for its healing. The beliefs of the imprisoned creature anchor its identity and allow the bird to adapt to its situation creatively. One of the lasting images the reader has of “Caged Bird” is the bird’s raising its head in song, its answer to fear, oppression, and the pressures of life. The political poem encourages strength in adversity.
Angelou did not intend “Caged Bird” for African Americans alone; she intended the poem for any listening ear. Like the caged bird, she uses her own creativity, prepares her own song, and shows resilience and strength in the face of hardships; the poem is her autobiography. Although the bird is still caged at the end, the reader is left with hope. The delicate bird is a survivor and remembers his song. The reader trusts that the bird can endure the oppression that hopefully will soon lift. The denouement is, however, open; readers—and the bird—can complete the ending as they will.
EVALUATION QUESTIONS
- Comment on the title of the poem.
- Discuss the content of the poem.
WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT
SECTION A
INSTRUCTION: Answer all questions.
- The purgation of the emotions of pity and fear in tragedy is called A. catharsis. B. tragic-comedy. C. dementia. D. cleansing.
- An exaggeration or overstatement in literature is aA. hexameter. B. hyperbole.
C. metaphor.D. soliloquy.
- A form of symbolism in which ideas or abstract qualities are represented in a poem is an A. allegory. B. allusion. C. ambiguity. D. apostrophe.
- The word ‘image’ is associated with A. attitude. B. mood. C. tone. D. abstraction.
- The stylistic device that uses the name of one thing to describe another is called a
A. synonym.B. metonymy.C. metaphor.D. antonym.
SECTION B
- Comment on a theme in the poem.
- List and examine the literary devices in the work.
READING ASSIGNMENT
Read up the use symbol in the poem in Exam Focus.
THEMES, LANGUAGE AND STYLE IN THE POEM.
Racism and Segregation
Maya confronts the insidious effects of racism and segregation in America at a very young age. She internalizes the idea that blond hair is beautiful and that she is a fat black girl trapped in a nightmare. Stamps, Arkansas, is so thoroughly segregated that as a child Maya does not quite believe that white people exist. As Maya gets older, she is confronted by more overt and personal incidents of racism, such as a white speaker’s condescending address at her eighth-grade graduation, her white boss’s insistence on calling her Mary, and a white dentist’s refusal to treat her. The importance of Joe Louis’s world championship boxing match to the black community reveals the dearth of publicly recognized African American heroes. It also demonstrates the desperate nature of the black community’s hope for vindication through the athletic triumph of one man. These unjust social realities confine and demean Maya and her relatives. She comes to learn how the pressures of living in a thoroughly racist society have profoundly shaped the character of her family members, and she strives to surmount them.
Debilitating Displacement
Maya is shuttled around to seven different homes between the ages of three and sixteen: from California to Stamps to St. Louis to Stamps to Los Angeles to Oakland to San Francisco to Los Angeles to San Francisco. As expressed in the poem she tries to recite on Easter, the statement “I didn’t come to stay” becomes her shield against the cold reality of her rootlessness. Besieged by the “tripartite crossfire” of racism, sexism, and power, young Maya is belittled and degraded at every turn, making her unable to put down her shield and feel comfortable staying in one place. When she is thirteen and moves to San Francisco with her mother, Bailey, and Daddy Clidell, she feels that she belongs somewhere for the first time. Maya identifies with the city as a town full of displaced people.
Maya’s personal displacement echoes the larger societal forces that displaced blacks all across the country. She realizes that thousands of other terrified black children made the same journey as she and Bailey, traveling on their own to newly affluent parents in northern cities, or back to southern towns when the North failed to supply the economic prosperity it had promised. African Americans descended from slaves who were displaced from their homes and homelands in Africa, and following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, blacks continued to struggle to find their place in a country still hostile to their heritage.
Resistance to Racism
Black peoples’ resistance to racism takes many forms in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Momma maintains her dignity by seeing things realistically and keeping to herself. Big Bailey buys flashy clothes and drives a fancy car to proclaim his worth and runs around with women to assert his masculinity in the face of dehumanizing and emasculating racism. Daddy Clidell’s friends learn to use white peoples’ prejudice against them in elaborate and lucrative cons. Vivian’s family cultivates toughness and establishes connections to underground forces that deter any harassment. Maya first experiments with resistance when she breaks her white employer’s heirloom china. Her bravest act of defiance happens when she becomes the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Blacks also used the church as a venue of subversive resistance. At the revival, the preacher gives a thinly veiled sermon criticizing whites’ charity, and the community revels in the idea of white people burning in hell for their actions.
FORM
Angelou does not allow meter, rhyme, and stanza to control her poetry. She determines her own structure—or lack of it—and uses form and device for her own means; she searches for the sound, the tempo, the rhythm, and the rhyme appropriate for each line.
“Caged Bird” is an example of unstructured verse. The number of beats per line varies; for example, line 1 has four beats, line 2 has six, line 3 has four, and line 4 has five. The number of lines in each stanza fluctuates as well; stanzas 1 and 2 have seven lines each, but stanzas 3 and 4 have eight. In addition to her use of the intermittent stanza, Angelou repeats stanza 3 as stanza 5; this repetition is reminiscent of the chorus in a song. The only other structuring device that Angelou employs in the thirty-eight lines is sporadic rhyme. For instance, only lines 9 and 11 in the entire first two stanzas use rhyming words (“cage” and “rage”); in the fourth stanza only lines 30 and 31 rhyme (“breeze” and “trees”). The only other rhyming words that Angelou uses—and at her own discretion—are in the third stanza, which she repeats as stanza 5. She rhymes “trill” and “still” with “hill”; she also rhymes “heard” and “bird.”
The repetition of the third stanza gives some predictability to the poem and allows the reader to participate actively in the unpleasant plight of the caged bird. By contrast, other parts of the poem are unpredictable and at times even pleasurable; the joy of the free bird makes it possible for the reader to bear the tragic story of the oppressed…
Metaphor:
The poet uses metaphor (an indirect comparison) when she compares wind to water. The words ‘downstream’ and ‘current’ make us think of the tides in a sea or oceafloats downstream
till the current ends
Again, she uses metaphors in the use of two birds — “free bird” and “caged bird”. The free bird represents the privileged section of the society whereas the caged one signifies the underprivileged. Maya Angelou was an active participant in the African American Freedom Movement. That is why this poem is seen as an autobiographical representation of the condition she and her community was in. The slavery and segregation of the African Americans are compared to the condition of the caged bird and the free bird refers to the freedom enjoyed by the White Americans.
Alliteration:
Alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of nearby words) is used in places like —can seldom see through (repetition of ‘s’ sound)
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
his shadow shouts on a nightmare screams
End Rhyme and Internal Rhyme:
End rhyme is used in the second, fourth and sixth lines of the third stanza — ‘trill’, ‘still’ and ‘hill’.
Internal rhyme is used in the fourth stanza — and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
Imagery:
Angelou uses vivid imageries. ‘Orange sun rays’, ‘distant hills’, fat worms’ etc are examples of visual imageries while ‘sighing trees’, ‘nightmare scream’ and ‘fearful trill’ are auditory imageries.
Personification:
The poet personifies (applied human characteristics) the two birds when she says —
‘dips his wing’, ‘dares to claim the sky’, ‘name the sky his own’, ‘opens his throat to sing’, ‘sings of freedom’ etc.
Repetition:
The poet repeats the third stanza later in the poem to emphasize the distressed condition of the downtrodden people.
Moreover, the use of contrast in the form of two birds in completely opposite situation and the use of moods in ‘fearful trill’ ‘nightmare scream’, ‘bright lawn’, ‘grave of dreams’ etc. also form literary devices
In the poem ‘Caged Bird’, the poet Maya Angelou expresses her views on social injustice. The poem itself is an extended metaphor of two birds; one bird is ‘caged’ while the other is ‘free’, this is a metaphor towards slavery with the ‘free bird’ representing whites and the ‘caged bird’ representing blacks. It could also be argued, though, towards any example of social injustice. Angelou shows her views through the use of conjunctions, rhyme and use of diction. Together, these techniques give a clear contrast of the unfairness between the standards of the ‘free bird’ and the ‘caged bird’.
When describing the ‘free bird’ Angelou starts lines with the conjunction ‘and’; ‘and floats downstream’, ‘and dips his wings’. This repetition of ‘and’ followed by what the ‘free bird’ does shows the many choices and opportunities the ‘free bird’ gets. The ‘free bird’ is ‘free’ to do as he pleases; he even ‘dares to claim the sky’. This relates to social injustice as the ‘caged bird’ ‘sings of things unknown but longed for still’, as if the ‘caged bird’ is deprived of the rights of the ‘free bird’ to ‘dip his wing’ or ‘float downstream’. The use of this conjunction shows the many choices the ‘free bird’ has and the injustice of the caged bird not getting these same opportunities.
In a repeated stanza (3 and 6) Angelou uses end rhyme to show the ‘caged bird’s’ lust for freedom and to add emphasis to the fact that the ‘caged bird’ does not get the same opportunities as the ‘free bird’. Throughout stanza’s 5 and 6 Angelou uses a repeated rhyme pattern, ‘trill…still…hill’, before on the last line of the stanza the word is a mismatched word, ‘freedom’.
EVALUATION QUESTIONS
- Examine the use of metaphor and tone in the poem.
- Analyse the use of symbols in the poem above.
GENERAL EVALUATION/REVISION QUESTIONS
- How does the poetess capture the main theme in the poem?
- Summarize the poem in your how words
WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT
- Identify the odd literary device from the list. A. enjambment B. plot C. rhyme D. alliteration.
2. We study literature in school because it A. provides a means to kill time B. expose students to life realities C. provides readers with entertainment D. teaches readers the use of words.
- Dramatic irony entails A. the praise of the audience B. a statement with a deeper significance C. a statement hilarious and sarcastic D. the praise tag of a great person
- The echoing of the meaning of a word by its sound is called A. phonetics
B. oxymoron C. pun D. onomatopoeia
- A comedy is a play in which A. nobody dies B. there is a happy ending C. there is real laughter D. the hero is a clown.
THEORY
Discuss the use of contrast in the poem above.
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