‘Caged Bird’ by Maya Angelou is a poem that explores Maya’s past

experiences as a Black-American woman in 1920 where people, who

suffered due to their race, sang to express how they really felt. Maya
depicted the inequality she received by comparing the lives of a ‘free
bird’ and a ‘caged bird’. She explains the importance of one’s
freedom.

Maya portrayed the free bird as happy in the poem. She explicitly
stated this by using the terms "leaps," "floats," and "dips" to convey
this.  These verbs give us an idea of how joyful the free bird is. This
demonstrates the bird's capacity for self-determination and ability to
experience life to the fullest. In other words, it can do whatever and
whenever it wants. This can also be supported by the quote' dares to
claim the sky', which means it has the audacity to claim ownership of
something it doesn't own.

Maya portrays the caged bird as being imprisoned. To express this,

she explicitly stated, "his wings are clipped, and his feet are tied."
This quote reveals that its freedom was forcibly taken away, implying
that the bird will be unable to fly even if it wishes to do so. Another
quote that supports this idea is "down his narrow cage, can
seldom see through." Unlike the free bird in stanza one, these words
convey the bird's isolation and despair, which gives us a clear
explanation of the bird’s environment.