CAGED BIRD

The poem describes the opposing experiences between two birds: one bird is able to live
in nature as it pleases, while a different caged bird suffers in captivity. Due to its
profound suffering, the caged bird sings, both to cope with its circumstances and to
express its own longing for freedom. Using the extended metaphor of the two birds,
Angelou paints a critical portrait of oppression in which she illuminates the privilege and
entitlement of the un-oppressed, and conveys the simultaneous experience of suffering
and emotional resilience. In particular, the poem's extended metaphor can be seen as
portraying the experience of being a member of the African American community. `

tHEMES
• Freedom and Slavery. The predominant theme of the poem is freedom. ...
• Despair and Hope. The caged bird is in a state of despair. ...
• Fear and Courage. While the free bird finds it easy to fly and enjoy his freedom by
claiming the sky, the caged bird lives in fear. ...
• Adversity and Good.
• Racial oppression

Imagery
The speaker creates vivid imagery through descriptive words and phrases. Imagery
enhances the theme and tone of the poem.
The speaker sees the physical appearance of the caged bird. It is locked in a cage and
cannot fly because his "wings are clipped and his feet are tied." So, it stalks around. It
shows the lack of freedom of the bird.
Then, the imagery of the free bird that leaps and floats develops the theme of freedom
and a joyful tone.
The persona describes the surroundings and the actions of the birds: “Orange sun rays,”
"fat worms," "dips his wing," "opens his throat."
These descriptions give the reader an image of the natural beauty and the actions of the
birds in the setting.
Juxtaposition
The poem compares two birds in different situations. Slavery is in contrast to freedom.
The caged bird and the free bird have different points of view.
Each bird expresses diametrically opposite emotions and actions. The free bird is joyful
and energetic, in contrast, the caged bird is sad and lethargic.
The free bird enjoys life, but in the poem, he does not sing although he is capable of
singing. The free bird does not sing of freedom because freedom is normal to him. The
free bird knows no fear. His body has not been clipped or tied.
However, the caged bird sings with fear and knows the value of freedom. His freedom of
movement has been taken away by whoever put him there.
4. Personification (or Anthropomorphism)
Trees are given human qualities when the poet describes them as “the sighing trees.”
Another instance of personification is “on the back of the wind.” The wind doesn't have a
back. Humans usually carry their children on their backs. This metaphor shows how the
free bird is confident and feels secure in his freedom.

Using birds as a motif to represent parts of the human condition is not unusual in
literature: poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote The Caged Skylark, in which his caged
bird was a metaphor for being trapped in our own bodies. Maya Angelou’s
autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings tells of her childhood growing up in
America before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public and began to
tackle discrimination in employment, education and other spheres of life. In this poem,
Angelou compares the life of a bird who is free to fly, enjoy nature and relax when he
pleases, with a bird shut up in a cage. He can only stalk from one end of his cage to the
other. He can’t fly because his wings are clipped – he can barely even see through the
narrow bars of his cage. In fact, the only freedom left for him is to open his throat to
sing.
The poem begins unexpectedly (given the title) with a description of the life of a free
bird. And what a life he enjoys. He ‘leaps’ through the sky, exploring the world as far as
he is able. He ‘floats downstream,’ following the course of a mighty river until it reachers
the sea. The choice of word ‘floats’ underlines how effortless the free bird’s life is: the
river will carry him wherever he needs to go. He floats ’till the current ends’ which is
a metaphor suggesting that he can fly as long as he likes, until the river meets the sea, at
which point his horizons widen and he can fly out over the entire ocean! In this way the
river represents opportunities that life brings the free bird, and implies that they are
practically endless. The free bird is warmed by the sun and, in another metaphor (‘dips
his wings’), has the freedom to interact with the world too. The sun is
a symbol representing warmth, life, luxury. Wherever the free bird chooses to go, he is
guaranteed a life of ease and relaxation.

The free bird enjoys a life of ease and luxury, able to indulge in all his favourite
pastimes: flying, exploring, eating ‘fat worms’ – the whole world is his playground.
Almost every word in the free bird’s life speaks of freedom and indulgence:
he leaps where the caged bird stalks; he floats where the caged bird stands; he dips his
wing in the orange sun’s rays while the caged bird is associated with shadow. The most
obvious technique in this poem is juxtaposition: you can try to pair almost everything
the free bird enjoys with its exact opposite in the caged bird’s world. Images as well as
words are juxtaposed: the free bird dares to claim the sky. By contrast, the caged
bird stands on a grave of dreams. Juxtaposition is all about creating contrast in ideas,
words and even sounds. Look at these examples from stanza four, in which the free bird
enjoys dining on fat worms: he is associated with languorous, warm liquid W
and nasal M, N sounds: winds, worms, waiting, dawn, lawn. The sounds blend and
harmonize in a way that creates euphony. Apart from shadow shouts, the caged bird’s
lines contain a mixture of various hard consonants: grave, dreams, nightmare,
scream, clipped, tied. Combining different hard consonant sounds is called cacophony:
in combination with diction (nightmare, shout, screams) it effectively suggests the
terrible psychic state of a bird or person confined all their lives.
Parallels with and allusions to the history of the African-American slave trade, and
subsequent social injustice between blacks and whites, are scattered through the
poem. Details such as the carefully manicured lawns enjoyed by wealthy plantation
owners, who used slaves to grow cash crops like cotton and sugar, and trade
winds (easterly winds that blow round the equator; they helped early sailing ships travel
from Europe and Africa to the Americas – the word trade alludes to the slave trade) help
contextualise Angelou’s poem. Other freedoms which were taken away from enslaved
people on plantations were the freedom to own property and even the right to name one’s
own children. Often, children born on plantations were given the names of the white
plantation owners. When the free bird is able to name the sky his own, he is actually
exercising basic rights that were denied his enslaved brethren.

The cage is the poem’s most important symbol, denying the bird his freedom and
suppressing his natural identity.
The most important symbol in the poem is the cage which traps the bird. It is both
physical (narrow) and figurative, therefore, it restrains both the bird’s body and its soul.
Firstly its wings are clipped and feet are tied. The bird is unable to exercise his most
natural birth-right – his instinctive need to fly. But the cage also alters the bird
psychologically: it is fearful, suffers from nightmares, and is sometimes provoked to
anger: bars of rage, scream, shout. This idea is what give the poem most of its pathos.
Imagine a child being tied up and locked in a dark room – or a person doomed lifelong to
threats, abuse and torture on a plantation. These images should stir a strong reaction.