Angelou Speaks: A Literary Essay on Theme Based on the Poem “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
What does it feel like to be stripped of your freedom? In Maya Angelou’s poignant poem “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” a poem filled with comparing and contrasting imagery, symbolism, and emotional rhetoric, one can clearly see and feel the plight of anyone kept in his or her place by invisible bars created by unnatural laws. The theme of longing for freedom swirls through the well laid out stanzas, inviting any reader to take a short jaunt and witness firsthand Angelou’s heartache scrawled on a page.
As a reader’s gaze skims through the first two stanzas, the journey starts and the dual purpose of her imagery becomes real instantly. Angelou begins her poem,
1 “The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
5 and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
10 can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied so he opens his
throat to sing.
The natural elegance of a bird in flight is symbolically invoked here to compare the plight of the oppressed with that of the free. Her dual purpose is to offer insight into the life of the oppressed while she, the writer, offers her hand freely in invitation to all to experience her ugly world of captivity without simultaneously judging her. Interestingly, Angelou’s focus never is to blame the free bird for the caged bird’s circumstances. Rather, she astutely focuses her words to demonstrate exclusively what it feels like to be caged. The caged bird, unable to do anything else and despite his anger and frustration, still finds a way to experience what little opportunity for freedom is available to him—he raises his voice to sing. This imagery brings to mind the human plight of those without liberty. Unable to do anything else, they use their voice to perhaps protest their plight, or perhaps to sing only for themselves. Regardless, the caged bird, like the unfree, uses their voice to give themselves comfort first and foremost. It is in the next stanzas we learn what their secondary purpose might be.
After the first couple of stanzas, the rising action moves quickly as we learn more about the free versus the confined through Angelou’s clever use of what a bird’s life can be like. Angelou goes on to write,
15 The caged bird sings with fearful trill of the things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard 20 on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn 25 and he names the sky his own.
Not missing a beat of the poem’s natural rhythm and end rhyme, Angelou forces her reader to consider in a compare and contrast format the disparity of two lives as a result of the lack of or possession of the most basic right: liberty. Angelou points out that a caged bird doesn’t know what awaits it outside its bars, but sings for it nonetheless. Anything could surely be better than to exist inside a cage. And thus, it sings for what it on some level must believe is possible, or why would it sing for or about liberty at all? Meanwhile, the free bird notably does not have a thought for the caged bird. Angelou writes about the free bird in a manner demonstrating its selfishness, without judging if the virtue of selfishness is good or bad. She merely states that the bird is focused on ‘another breeze…trade winds…or fat worms.’ In short, the free bird is focused only on the next possibility for itself. There is no indication in her writing that she believes the free bird is able or willing to focus on anything else.
The final two stanzas make one wish for more of her writing as the readers realizes his or her journey with Angelou will soon come to a close. In the final moments of the poem, Angelou concludes,
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing 30 The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard 35on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.
At first, a reader might wonder why Angelou repeats herself like a chorus might from a Greek tragedy. But then the impact of her emotional rhetoric comes clear, and the brilliance of emphasizing that nothing ever changes for the caged bird is obvious and tragic in and of itself. All the caged bird can do is stay in place, and wish for something it doesn’t know about, but know he needs if he will ever not feel ‘fearful’ or ‘long’ for his fair share or at least a portion. Meanwhile, in the preceding stanza the reader can visualize the free bird soaring in an afternoon shadow, casting unknowingly himself against that which he never saw was trapped, so focused was he on other things.
In conclusion, Angelou’s poem is timeless as it captures the eternal struggle of man vs. man. Her writer’s craft artfully dodges the critics who might claim that her writing is politically charged as it stands on its own as simply beautiful English literature. But as a sad reminder, one can think about the time it was likely written, and the emotion poured into it by a writer who likely only wrote so well because she had experienced for herself what it felt like to exist in her own captivity. If one could rewrite this poem, it would probably be a new conclusion where perhaps the bird notices his shadow, turns his attention to the unjustly trapped, and takes a new flight path that offers salvation.
