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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Coggle Diagram
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
SETTING
Most of the book is set in the 1930s and 1940s during the midst of the Great Depression and World War II
Settings throughout story
Rural/South
St. Louis
California
Mexico
PROTAGONIST
Protagonist: Maya Angelou, an African-American, at first, child then steadily grows up throughout the book and we get to see her character develop quite a bit.
Characteristics:
Her insecurities are important to the development
Her history
The way she thinks about community
MAIN CONFLICT
Man versus society: her struggle with being accepted by the community and norms of the community.
CONNECTION TO EQ
How do communities define themselves?
In the book, communities seem to define themselves by stereotypes that are assigned to them. Some of these stereotypes are difficult for Maya to adjust to or understand why they exist/there is a need to adjust to them
How are individuals affected by their sense of belonging in communities?
Most Individuals gravitate towards having a sense of community. Those who have that community feel what the rest of their community feels.
Maya goes to an all white school and recalls a teacher that never treated her differently for not being a white kid. This is to point out that she has no other safe places or a community to rely on at school other than this teacher. “My entire stay there might have been time lost if it hadn’t been for the unique personality of a brilliant teacher. Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information.” (pg.276)
When her community mourns the loss of another black man to lyching Maya learns what it’s like for people that look like her out there. This makes her aware of her community by feeling collectively. “My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching…men in the store stood away from the walls…Women greedily clutched the babes on their laps while on the porch the shufflings and smiles, flirtings and pinching of a few minutes before were gone. This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help….We didn't breathe. We didn't hope. We waited.”(pg.141-142)
THEME 1
There’s a lot of Loneliness in Inconsistency
“My entire stay there might have been time lost if it hadn’t been for the unique personality of a brilliant teacher. Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information.” (pg.276) This is saying she has very few other positive descriptions about people.
Maya as a kid had a very move-intense streak. She was never one place too long, also not setting roots anywhere. She and her little brother were also abandoned by a porter moving the kids from place to place. Those things might/definitely affected Maya’s sense of community and ability to easily settle in a place.
THEME 2
Betrayal by the Familiar Hits the Hardest
TW: Sexual Assault
This is right after he molests her in her room:
“Finally he was quiet, and then came the nice part. He held me so softly that I wished he wouldn’t ever let me go. I felt at home. From the way he was holding me I knew he’d never let me go or let anything bad happen to me. This was probably my real father and we had found each other at last.” (pg.127)
“Poor Mr.Freeman twisted in his chair to look empty threats over to me” (pg.115)
This quote references the emotions she’s feeling about Mr.Freeman. While she is sitting in the stand condemning him to prison she also pities him.
1930s-40s AESTHETIC
There’s a 1930s-40s aesthetic with this section of the book book because that’s when it takes place. It’s a charming decade to set a book/story in.
“Between the two physical sore spots, (smiling) I suppose I could have been more uncomfortable, but that was not the case. As a member of the winning team (the graduating class of 1940) I had outdistanced unpleasant sensations by miles.”(pg. 224)
This is an example where the quote specifically says which date it’s talking about.
METAPHORS
The free bird = White Americans/Free people
The caged bird = African Americans and their captivity in the social norms and a symbol of imprisonment
The relevancy is in the title of the book and the meaning behind why her memoir is titled this way.
She is an African-American girl-woman learning the mostly constricting social norms of a person like her in America.
POINT OF VIEW
The very neutral point of view about things or the seemingly evened out negativity and positivity she describes in this book is pretty consistent in this section.
“The morning’s brightness drew me awake and I was surrounded with strangeness.” (pg. 321)
This is a nice neutral opening to a paragraph that sets her constantly neutral tone throughout the section.
