Free Essays on I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou faces many hardships, yet manages to overcome them all, in her autobiography, â€Å"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.† Maya is a strong willed, often stubborn, outgoing, somewhat outspoken, and rather intelligent girl. She becomes very tolerant due to some of her experiences. She also matures faster mentally than many other girls her age because of her situation and experiences. From the time she was young and through adolescence, Maya considered herself ugly. She was a tall, somewhat lanky African American. She was skinny, and felt that her eyes were too small and squinty. She was also ashamed of her large feet. Throughout the story, Maya is discouraged by the segregation of the blacks. For a long time she is denied the job that she wishes to have because of the color of her skin. Also, she wants her family to be together and to be happy. She is separated from her parents at a young age and lives with her grandmother and uncle for most of her childhood. When she is with her parents, she tends to feel secondary. There is always something a touch more important that she and her brother Baily. Maya Angelou faces many hardships, yet manages to overcome them all, in her autobiography, â€Å"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.† When the book begins, Angelou is a young child, a mere three years old. As she grows up, though somewhat sheltered by her grandmother’s position as a general store owner, her eyes are opened to the current ways of the South. Blacks are lesser people that whites, and that was the way it was for her. On several occasions she watched in horror as young girls called her grandmother by her first name, when they should have been respectful and at lease used â€Å"Miss†. Once breaking the segregation barrier for herself, she gets a job with the Streetcar Company. Having a job, and the responsibility that comes with it, she mentally matures faster than the other children her age. While living with her mother t... Free Essays on I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Free Essays on I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou faces many hardships, yet manages to overcome them all, in her autobiography, â€Å"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.† Maya is a strong willed, often stubborn, outgoing, somewhat outspoken, and rather intelligent girl. She becomes very tolerant due to some of her experiences. She also matures faster mentally than many other girls her age because of her situation and experiences. From the time she was young and through adolescence, Maya considered herself ugly. She was a tall, somewhat lanky African American. She was skinny, and felt that her eyes were too small and squinty. She was also ashamed of her large feet. Throughout the story, Maya is discouraged by the segregation of the blacks. For a long time she is denied the job that she wishes to have because of the color of her skin. Also, she wants her family to be together and to be happy. She is separated from her parents at a young age and lives with her grandmother and uncle for most of her childhood. When she is with her parents, she tends to feel secondary. There is always something a touch more important that she and her brother Baily. Maya Angelou faces many hardships, yet manages to overcome them all, in her autobiography, â€Å"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.† When the book begins, Angelou is a young child, a mere three years old. As she grows up, though somewhat sheltered by her grandmother’s position as a general store owner, her eyes are opened to the current ways of the South. Blacks are lesser people that whites, and that was the way it was for her. On several occasions she watched in horror as young girls called her grandmother by her first name, when they should have been respectful and at lease used â€Å"Miss†. Once breaking the segregation barrier for herself, she gets a job with the Streetcar Company. Having a job, and the responsibility that comes with it, she mentally matures faster than the other children her age. While living with her mother t... Free Essays on I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Movie and Book The novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", by Maya Angelou is the first series of five autobiographical novels. This novel tells about her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas with her religious grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of three Maya and her four-year old brother, Bailey, are turned over to the care of their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Southern life in Stamps, Arkansas was filled with humiliation, violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux Klan, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks. Maya knows that to be black and female is to be faced with violence and violation. This is brought into focus when she goes to live with her mother and is raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When Maya is faced with this catastrophe, tells who did this to her, and the man is killed, she believes her voice killed him. She withdraws into herself and vows never to speak again. Her mother feeling that she has done everything in her power to make Maya talk, but can cannot reach her, sends Maya and her brother back to Stamps. After Maya returns to Stamps and with the help of her Teacher-Ms. Flowers she begins to speak again. The culmination of the novel is when Maya describes her eighth grade graduation. Angelou, her classmates, and parents listen to the condescending and racist manner in which the guest speaker talks. After listening to his insults, Ma... Free Essays on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Literary Analysis As shown in by Maya Angelou, Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin and Family Portrait by Alicia Moore, family greatly affects who a person grows up to be. All of these writings show examples of children living their lives based on how their parents lived their lives. However, they all have different styles and methods of expressing their ideas. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the author tells about her home life using metaphors. She speaks of them almost as if they were interesting people she just happened to come into contact with in her life, other than her family. Maya Angelou very rarely quoted anything her mother said. She talks about her a lot, but didn’t include much dialogue between her mother and herself in her memoirs. However, she did comment a lot on her mother’s exterior. â€Å"My mother’s beauty literally assailed me. Her red lips split to show even white teeth and her fresh-butter color looked see-through clean.† Maya commented on her mother’s appearance quite often, which led me to believe that she never really knew her mother all that well. All she knew was what she saw. This is quite the same in Family Portrait by Alicia Moore. The only side of her parents it seemed she was quite aware of was the side that was always fighting, always angry. â€Å"Mama ple ase stop crying, I can’t stand the sound.† It seemed that her parents were never content with their home situation. It was a never-ending quest to prove to her mother and father that she could be better. Unlike in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, this author seemed to be blaming herself for all the wrong that existed in her family. â€Å"I won’t spill the milk at dinner, I’ll be so much better, I’ll do everything right, I’ll be your little girl forever, I’ll go to sleep at night.† The author recognized the hardships in the family and tried to get the characters to fix their own problems. The theme in C...