![]() The second stanza contrasts the first with the limited movement of the caged bird it also has seven lines. ![]() The first stanza highlights the luxuries of the free bird it has seven lines. This structure is very important as it lends credence to the message the poem conveys. The first and second stanzas have seven lines each the third stanza has eight lines the fourth and fifth stanzas each with four lines and stanza six contains eight lines. Beyond the surface level, it juxtaposes the opportunity-imbued life of the white Americans with the poor living conditions of the segregated black Americans.Ĭaged Bird is a poem of thirty-eight lines divided into six stanzas. The poem particularly provides, through the use of contrast, an insight to what the caged bird misses, that is freedom. By contrasting the free bird to the caged bird, the sky to the cage, endless opportunities to no opportunity, the poet subtly juxtaposes the life of a black American with that of a white American. The poem is an allegorical reference to the Afro-American situation. Like the “caged bird” in Maya Angelou’s poem, he only watches but can’t do anything. Read the Poem: CAGED BIRD by Maya Angelouīigger Thomas is conditioned to a rung of the society where he could barely eke out a living for himself and more than anything feel human and breathe the air of freedom. Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird explores this topical issue too the racial discrimination and its effect of limiting prospects for an Afro-American. He resigns himself to passivity, self-hating and self-shaming. He wants to be many good things but encased in the cage of his blackness, he is denied many social privileges. He wants to part of the society but not when he and his kind are conditioned to a ghetto. It is there in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Richard Wright’s Native Son, August Wilson’s Fences, et cetera.īigger Thomas in Native Son for example wants to become an aviator but he can’t be one because of his black skin. This is apparent in most Afro-American writings before and after the period. ![]() The foregoing illustration defines the life of the typical black American before the 60s and 70s as symbolised by the caged bird in Maya Angelou’s poem crushed under the sledgehammer of the oppressive mechanism of toxic racial discrimination and segregation.
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