I know why the caged bird sings “brings out the evil of social discrimination expericed by maya angelon .

How does she express her anguish ? what are your thoughts about this kind of
discrimination ?

Author

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 the lines of this
text.

Summary
‘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.
1st
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.
2nd 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
plainreasons 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.
3rd 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.
4th 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.

5th 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.

6th 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.
A theme in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Angelou’s identity struggle as a black female. During this time in the
country, colorism and a European standard taught that having black features was not only bad, but made a person
ugly. In this quote, Angelou believes and internalizes those standards and puts herself down for not fitting that image.
Angelou wished that she could change her identity and become a white female because she felt that she and others
could only accept her as beautiful if she was white.