I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Critique.

Authors Avatar
The book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was educational in that it depicts the harsh childhood that the author, Maya Angelou, led. In reading the story, I found myself enveloped in the book. The title of the book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, seems to mean that Maya can relate to a caged bird singing. She has become caged in that she lives in a time of racism and that her gender makes it all the harder. She relates to the reason the bird sings in that at the end of the book she finally accepts her womanhood and her color as what it is not as what it could have been. At the beginning of the book, the reader sees how far racism has distorted Maya's reality. Maya believes that by wearing a dress that she was going to look 'like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world. (P1)' But the dress was 'a white woman's once-was-purple throwaway.' Because of the blatant racism that Maya faced and the hard life that a black child led, she was made to think that white people were better than black people. She would fantasize that her 'real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let [her] straighten...' and her 'light blues eyes' would replace the eyes that were 'small and squinty. (P3)' Maya says her appearance is merely a 'black ugly dream that she will wake out of. She believed in the superiority of whites that she 'knew God was white too. (P40)' She grew up in a time in which race and appearance were very important and which made the difference in how you were treated. The idea that appearances were important was illustrated through Maya's uncle Willie. Her uncle was crippled and had trouble with speaking clearly. Although Every morning, Maya sees the cotton pickers come in happy and boastful, but after the picking is done they are downtrodden and bitter. At sundown, the 'people dragged, rather than their empty cotton sacks. (P7)' It showed that even these cotton pickers wished to live through fantasy but reality soon come back through the day. The idea of fantasy vs. the stark contrast of reality is very much apart of the story,
Join now!
shown through the cotton pickers and also shown through Maya's uncle Willie. Her uncle had to live life as a cripple and was many people mistreated him since he was black and was crippled. One time, while Maya walked into the store, she finds her uncle Willie 'standing erect behind the counter, not leaning forward or resting on the small shelf that had been built for him. (P9)" Because uncle Willie was tired of being crippled, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of the life of a cripple. Although Maya would never know "why it was important ...

This is a preview of the whole essay