I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Introduction:

Summary:

Maya recalls an Easter Sunday at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Arkansas. Her mother makes her a special Easter dress from lavender taffeta, and Maya thinks the dress will make her look like the blond-haired blue-eyed movie star that she wishes, deep down, to be. But, the dress turns out to be drab and ugly, as Maya laments that she is black, and unattractive as well. She leaves her church pew to go to the bathroom, and doesn't make it; she runs from the church, ashamed, but glad to be out of church and away from the children who torment her, and make her childhood even harder than it already is.

Analysis:

One of the main themes of this chapter is race and appearance; Maya already establishes that she wanted to be a movie-star looking white girl as a child, and tried to deny her real appearance. Connected with the idea of race is beauty, as Maya describes images of blond hair and blue eyes as the paragon of beauty, and says her appearance is merely a "black ugly dream" that she will wake out of.

Maya seems to have been an imaginative child, as she envisions her "head [bursting] like a dropped watermelon" from trying to hold her bladder. Angelou shows a talent for using images to explain and clarify feelings, and employing her descriptive powers to make even mundane incidents very vivid.

This autobiography, which covers Maya's life from age 3 to age 16, is often considered a bildungsroman since it is primarily a tale of youth and growing into young adulthood. However, unlike a typical, novel-form bildungsroman, the story does not end with the achievement of adulthood; Angelou continues to write about her life in four other volumes, all addressing her life chronologically from her childhood to the accomplishments of her adulthood. It is important to keep in mind that this is an autobiography, rather than a novel, and that the narrator and the author are indeed one and the same, and the events described in the book are intended to relate a very personal portrait of a person's life.

Chapter 1:

Summary:

Maya says that when she was three years old and her brother was four, they were sent from their father in California to their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. They were eventually embraced by the town, and lived at the back of the store that their grandmother and uncle owned and ran. Their grandmother's store is the center of life in the Negro community of the town, being the pick-up and drop-off point for cotton pickers in picking season.

Analysis:

Angelou tells of the little sensory details that make her life working and living in the store an adventure for a young girl. She recalls the smells, and unfamiliarity of the place, and the constant stream of people who made the place seem exciting and almost magical. However, the theme of romance vs. reality soon becomes plain; for even as the cotton pickers come in each morning, happy and boastful, each afternoon they come back bitter and wondering how to make enough money to make ends meet. Angelou notes the difference between the wonderful mornings and the hard reality of the afternoons, knowing that however things might seem, there are always the harsh facts of life to face.

The difficulty of being black in the South is a theme that is important throughout the work; financially, it is difficult to make ends meet, and black people also face social hardship. Even in the intro to the work, Angelou reminds us that living in the segregated South during this time is never easy; not even to a child, and not even with wonderful sights and sounds around at the store.

Chapter 2:

Summary:

Maya and her brother recite their times tables for their Uncle Willie, who was crippled as a child and whose left side of his body is shriveled and deformed. Maya and her brother are disturbed by his disability, though his mother, Maya's grandmother, blames God but accepts her son. Things are more difficult for him, since able-bodied men are hardly able to make a living and take their insecurities out on him, and because he too is ashamed of being crippled. Maya recalls the one time that he manages to pretend that he wasn't crippled, and empathizes with him because of his hardships.

She also starts reading and enjoying literature while she is in Stamps, Shakespeare especially. She also enjoys the works of many prominent black authors, which her Momma, or grandmother, approves more of. Although young Maya likes Shakespeare, and is fine with the fact that he is white, her Momma wouldn't want to know that Maya enjoys a white man's work.

Analysis:

The story of Uncle Willie shows how important appearance is in how people are treated and thought of. Because Uncle Willie is so obviously crippled, most men treat him badly; perhaps the envy that he is not able-bodied and still has a better living than they do. His disability is something that he cannot escape from, except for the one time that Angelou speaks of here. The way people judge him based on appearance is certainly unfair, but similar to how black people are treated, just because of their color. Prejudice is a theme that the novel cannot avoid, because Angelou herself will have to deal with the prejudice that goes along with her black skin for all of her life, and, like Uncle Willie's handicap, it is not something that she can simply shrug off.

The great importance of the issue of race is very clear when Angelou says her Momma would not want her to read Shakespeare because he is white. Race is made into such a big, pervasive issue in the South, that it can affect even how people view such apparently non-inflammatory things as Shakespeare's plays. Momma's reaction might be unfair in some ways, but since great injustice has been perpetrated on the issue of race, this merely shows how deeply this unfairness can hurt people.

Chapter 3:

Summary:

Angelou continues to tell of the store, and her work there; it is her favorite place during her childhood, and filled with great magic as she grows up. During the day she works in the store, measuring out dry goods for customers; in the evening, she helps to feed the hogs and chickens they keep.

One night while she is feeding the animals, Mr. Steward, the white former sheriff, rides up to the store; he tells Momma to have Willie stay inside and out of sight, since a black man messed