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I know why a caged bird sings. ... I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? is about the life
of a free ?bird? vs. the life of a caged and captured ?bird?. ...
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. 1) Summary of Character Traits a) School
smart (Maya is smart. When she moves to San Francisco from ...
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Three primary problems ?cage? Maya Angelou
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I know why the caged bird sings. ... It is an unnecessary insult? (4). This vivid assertion
ends the opening section of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. ...
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. BOOK REPORT ON ?I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings? Section I 1. In the text ?I Know Why the ...
Submitted by BHSRULZ on April 10, 2005
Category: Book Reports
Words: 4036 | Pages: 17
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Introduction:
Summary:
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...
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