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    Literary Analysis

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    Rich Miguel
    The poem "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou uses extended metaphor to represent the experience of oppression of African Americans. It contrasts the "free bird" that can go wherever it wants with the "caged bird" that lives in confinement. While the free bird feels powerful, the caged bird "sings with a fearful trill" and stands upon "the grave of dreams", symbolizing the struggle of black people to achieve freedom and equality. The poem explores themes of racism, oppression, and the desire for minority groups like black women to be free from the exclusion of society.

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    Literary Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Rich Miguel
    156 views2 pages
    The poem "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou uses extended metaphor to represent the experience of oppression of African Americans. It contrasts the "free bird" that can go wherever it wants with the "caged bird" that lives in confinement. While the free bird feels powerful, the caged bird "sings with a fearful trill" and stands upon "the grave of dreams", symbolizing the struggle of black people to achieve freedom and equality. The poem explores themes of racism, oppression, and the desire for minority groups like black women to be free from the exclusion of society.

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    The poem "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou uses extended metaphor to represent the experience of oppression of African Americans. It contrasts the "free bird" that can go wherever it wants with the "caged bird" that lives in confinement. While the free bird feels powerful, the caged bird "sings with a fearful trill" and stands upon "the grave of dreams", symbolizing the struggle of black people to achieve freedom and equality. The poem explores themes of racism, oppression, and the desire for minority groups like black women to be free from the exclusion of society.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    156 views2 pages

    Literary Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Rich Miguel
    The poem "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou uses extended metaphor to represent the experience of oppression of African Americans. It contrasts the "free bird" that can go wherever it wants with the "caged bird" that lives in confinement. While the free bird feels powerful, the caged bird "sings with a fearful trill" and stands upon "the grave of dreams", symbolizing the struggle of black people to achieve freedom and equality. The poem explores themes of racism, oppression, and the desire for minority groups like black women to be free from the exclusion of society.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Richell Mark B.

    Miguel

    Ronnie Buan

    STEM 12 – Newton

    Caged Bird
    by Maya Angelou

    Caged Bird has as its focal theme Freedom, Freedom as an all inclusive right. The

    "Caged Bird” is an extended metaphor for two birds, the free bird and the caged bird. The poem

    deals with the theme of the oppression experienced by African Americans as slaves in the past.

    The poem is full of symbols, personifications, metaphors, allusions and various other poetic

    devices. The first stanza as a whole also introduces the free-flowing nature of the poem, which

    lacks a concrete rhyme scheme. This lacks of rhyme scheme reflects the lack of restrictions faced

    by the free bird. At the same time, the combined use of assonance and consonance allows sounds

    to flow into one another, further contributing to this bird's sense of unrestricted ease. This free

    bird is not only able to go wherever it pleases, but its sense of freedom also makes it feel

    powerful: it "dares to claim the sky."

    The Caged Bird regularly features references to the long-standing oppression of black

    people in the United States. It is clear that this title had great significance to Angelou, as it was

    the title of her entire life story. 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 that is some

    ways, she was still feeling the presence of slavery. In the third stanza, Maya Angelou mention a

    phrase “sings with a fearful trill” which stands for her effort and struggle to seek for her freedom.

    This is the hardest time for her because struggling for her rights is not supported by the majority
    group. She tries to protest against racism toward her but she does not have much power, so

    Angelou symbolizes her weakness using the phrase “sing with a fearful trill”. Nevertheless, she

    still believes to her mind that she should be strong and survive in her harsh life.

    In the fifth stanza Maya Angelou gives such a shocking line to the readers in order to

    extremely protest to the negative impact of racism toward her by saying, “but a caged bird stands

    on the grave of dreams”. The lines, “Grave of dreams” is the symbol of her inferiority, how can

    she reach her dream to have more decent life if her dreams are burried on the grave. And last, the

    sixth stanza is a repetition of the third stanza, somehow a paradox that in the part of "things

    unknown but longed for still" a feeling deep in his heart, of a rather elusive hope of freedom.

    Based on the analysis of the whole stanza, we get the idea that feminism issued in this poem

    related to minority feminism. Women are trying to be free from exclusion of a society because of

    racism, oppression, repression, and segregation upon them. In some stanzas it is emphasized that

    Maya Angelou specifically and black women generally symbolized as bird living in narrow cage

    which feet are tied. An important message that one might take from this poem is that one needs

    to value what one has and never take anything for granted.

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