Maya Angelou Caged Bird

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In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou portrays herself as a caged bird and represents her struggles in her life and how she persevered. Just as a caged bird feels trapped, Maya herself felt that she is restricted from many things that would not allow her to be free. Maya Angelou endured many hardships in her life. Maya’s cage in the book is represented by the racism she faces, sexual abuse she received at young age; and it is with her power of words that she is able to free herself from the chains that tied her. Maya Angelou has to face a great deal of adversity against racism; she had to endure the effects of such phenomenon and segregation at a very young age. One of these moments was during her graduation ceremony, when a white…show more content…
Freeman, with fatherly affection. She was sexually abused at a very young age and becomes traumatized after. She starts to isolate herself from the rest of the world, especially after Mr. Freeman’s death. Maya felt that because of her words Mr. Freedman was dead and felt guilty. She thinks that if she continues to speak to everyone else, she was going to hurt people and more of them would end up dead just like Mr. Freeman. As a result of her guilt, Maya decides to stop talking to everyone else, until Mrs. Bertha Flowers, one of Stamps most gracious woman shows up and becomes her mentor. James Saunders writes, “It is Mrs. Flowers who is finally able to get Marguerite to talk, having her read from works that in themselves are demanding recitation. The therapy is so effective that it must have carried over into the writer's own poetic career.” Maya was taught the power of positive words, and that “words mean more than what it set down on paper.” (98) Language had brought a new sense of life and meaning to Maya and because of Mrs. Flowers, a deeper passion for literature had awoken and it stuck for the rest of her life. She was taught to rediscover her own voice by using other writer’s works and in that way she was able to be once again engaged to the world she

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