I Know When Caged Bird Sings Literary Analysis Maya Angelou

Namely, losing her confidence when her experiment begins to fall apart. It starts to fall apart when her crush doesn’t accept her invitation to her farewell party and then when she finds out everyone’s going to Allison’s birthday party, a girl in her choir, instead. It gets worse when she messes up her solo at the choir concert and everyone makes fun of her. Maya stops talking to others and goes back to her old self. As proof of this, “Why did I believe I was anything but an inside joke?...I’m not special, I’m just a crazy girl in Grandma shoes. I don’t have balls at all...All my confidence and inner strength-how do I find it again?” (227-228).This reflects how Maya feels about herself. Maya brings herself down by letting everyone else get to her. She cancels her party and decides to give up on her experiment because she feels so bad about herself. Maya’s popularity disapears and even her friends have abondened her. Furthermore, Maya realizes that she was closest to popularity when “I was talking to people. It was when I opened up my introverted circle and allowed everyone I met in. It was when I included everyone” (230). As a result of this realization, Maya understands the true meaning of popularity. It was more then looks . It’s more than the right clothes, hair or what you owned, it was who you are and how you treat others. After determining this, Maya decides to invite anyone who doesn’t have a date to prom to go with her. Instead of excluding people like she did for her farewell party, she includes everyone. Maya beomces confident and positive again. By putting the past behind her, Maya can move forward and continue her experiment. In the end, Maya learns that to be confident, she has to let go, find that light inside of her and show it to the

It had soon fostered in Maya the idea of not being wanted due to being shy or not pretty, and when comparing herself to Bailey, she knew that between the two of them Bailey was the favorite of their family and friends. Growing up with Momma, their grandmother, Maya, and Bailey had begun to form their ideas as to why neither of their parents had wanted a relationship with them, and for Maya, it had strengthened her inner thought of not being good enough for her mother, father, or anyone she comes across. When their parents had sent gifts one year, not only did it confirm their existence but also how little they had known about her considering her egotistical father sent a picture of himself and her mother a tea set, which would not get much use in the white-dominated South. Bailey had the same reaction to his gifts and instead feel excited about what they had gotten, it left the sibling more confused, and Maya recalled how"the gifts opened the door to questions that neither of us wanted to ask. Why did they send us away?

Nyet is what they say, and I don’t want to hear this again” (Okimoto, 2010, p. 3) She doesn’t think, “Maybe it will work this time”, she doesn’t think, “Maybe if I help out around the house, they will let me go,” instead she thinks they will reject her request. Maya’s experience hadn’t taught her otherwise. Yet, she still takes one. This shows that she is adjusting to the American lifestyle.

Maya’s experience in early and late childhood convey the message that a person must rid their mind of what others expect them to be in order to establish a true identity. Throughout Maya’s life, much of her time is spent struggling over what others want her to be. Only when she is able to recognize that her identity is unique to her and only her is she allowed to free her mind of worry, and establish personal identity.

Impudent, powhitetrash, and dirty are just a few words that Maya’s grandmother uses to describe girls who do not respect their elders. Cleaning their bodies, and whipping the dust from their feet are a few examples of Maya’s unforgettable memories as a child, she referred to them as “burning reminders” (Angelou). She never understood why she had to follow her grandmother’s rules, but little does she know that that moment would foreshadow a major event in her life. Her mother’s story impacted her life greatly because as a young girl she did not comprehend why her mom would tolerate little girls who called her vicious names, but her mother taught her a lesson greater then that, “Lay hands on the sick and afflicted” (Angelou). Angelou’s quoted

Maya feels guilt, feeling as though she worked as “the devils mouthpiece,” causing her to not talk to anyone other than Bailey, her family portrays this behavior as disrespectful. Maya goes back to Stamps with Momma and after multiple events, Momma fears for Maya’s and Bailey’s safety saving money to send them to live with Vivian, their biological mother at the age of

“What new indignity would they think of to subject her to? Would I be able to stay out of it” (Angelou Pg.26). In this part of the book we could see how naive Maya is at this point in time, she thinks she could do something to stop it. Momma has grown so accustomed to this that she

When it comes to confidence and learning that what’s on the inside that counts, Maya seems to lack a whole lot of that. As she grows up in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas; Maya starts to develop a hate relationship with her appearance and how she conceives herself. She always compared herself to the people around her. “When I was described by our playmates as being

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou displays several characters who each own a voice that they make their own. Throughout the memoir, the reader learns about Angelou’s life, including the people that she grew up with as a child. One of the main characters that had a significant impact on Angelou as she was growing up was her brother, Bailey. Bailey helped Angelou understand the life around her as she was trying to navigate the world. He was a strong role model that she could look up to. He looked out for her, whether it be by standing up to adults who called her ugly or giving her essential advice that only a big brother could. However, Bailey also had a life of his own that we, as the audience, learn about through Angelou’s eyes. Bailey faced several challenges as he grew up, but never failed to use his voice in his own, unique way.

Maya’s Graduation played a big role in shaping who she became later on in life. Before knowing how the graduation would eventually turn out, everyone was excited, “The children in Stamps’ trembled visibly with anticipation, some adults were excited too, but to be certain the whole young population had come down with gradation epidemic.” Maya was exceptionally ecstatic; she was the youngest and one of the first to be called on stage, “I was going to be lovely, a walking model of all various styles of fine hand sewing and it didn’t worry me that I was the only twelve year old and merely graduating from eighth grade. Her excitement was short lived though, for as the graduation finally started, Maya could tell something was wrong, “Finding my seat

While Bailey was quick to forgive their mother for making them live with their grandmother, Maya remained wary. She was not quick to forget about the times that she had spent feeling as though she had done something wrong to be sent away, but even still she resolved herself to give their mother a chance, if for the simple fact that her brother attached himself to her so quickly. “She was too beautiful to have children. I had never seen a woman as pretty as she who was called ‘Mother’. Bailey on his part fell instantly and forever hers; he had forgotten the loneliness and the nights when we had cried together because we were ‘unwanted children’. He had never left her warm side or shared the icy wind of solitude with me. She was his Mother Dear and I resigned myself to his condition. They were more alike than she and I, or even he and

Many people that are exposed to racism tend to become insecure about their skin color and ethnic background etc. When people constantly treat someone different because they look different the person begins to feel different, and wish they were someone or something “better”. In Maya Angelou’s autobiography she demonstrates what its like growing up in a racist community and how it feels to be the outcast. Angelou continuously speaks about being someone different her ideal self, something she is completely different from. She feels this way due to the racist society she lives in. In "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" Maya Angelou demonstrates in her autobiography in 1969 that even with love and affection in a household, it is difficult to view themselves in a positive way, living in a racist society.

Despite her initial belief that her mother resides in California, Maya discovers in the car ride to her new home that she and her brother will live in St. Louis with their mother, and not in California with both parents. Not once does she wonder about what her new life might look like in either city. She remembers, “I closed myself off to everything but the kissing sounds of the tires on the pavement and the steady moan of the motor” (124). She merely attempts to pretend like the move is not happening. She only reacts once the full reality of her situation strikes her, saying, “I stopped crying since there was no chance to get back to Stamps and Momma” (127). Before

It is shown here that she does not remember much of her earlier life and with her style choice, it helps show that, yet, keeps the story interesting. Later on in Maya’s life, it is noticeable that as she matures as a person and a writer, Maya really impacts audiences with her struggles as she grows up through a segregated and racist nation. Maya’s style changes drastically after Mr. Donleavy speaks at her 8th grade graduation. “The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.” (176). He talked about the great achievements the local white school had achieved and all the great things they could go on to do and the black children could not have the same luxuries and were mostly sports stars. This gave Maya a realistic view of how people thought of black people. This event is one of many that

Born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri she was named Marguerite Johnson nicknamed “Maya” by her brother; her surname is an adaptation of that of her first husband. Due to the breakup of her parents' marriage, her brother and herself had moved to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya was raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was eight years old and for the following five years was mute. In her teens she moved to California to live with her mother, and at 16 gave birth to her son (Angelou, Maya). Which lead to the portrays unsparingly, but with humour, the hardships of her early years, including the trauma of rape by her mother's lover; it was nominated for a U.S. National Book Award. (Marguerite Annie)