I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Essay 2

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Essay 2

  • Submitted By: heleena1
  • Date Submitted: 04/25/2011 10:57 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 786
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 448

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is about the coming of age as a precious but insecure black girl in the American South during the 1930’s and partially in California during the 1940’s. As a black girl during those times it was difficult. This chapter is about responsibility and growing up, learning new things everyday, which then gives us the theme: that those with more experience in life can grow up and teach the younger generation new things that they themselves had to discover on their own. This is not the major theme of this story but it is in this final chapter. The theme is expressed through her final actions and steps she has to make for the rest of her life. The author does not say directly that she grows up and learns responsibility but throughout the whole book you can see how each step she takes good or bad she learns from them and slowly but eventually learns responsibility and maturity.
Maya Angelou begins her final chapter with nothing left to say but, “The world has ended, and I was the only person who knew it” (241). Which leaves the reader questioning the rest of what she has to say and why was she the only person to know that the world was ended. And what exactly did she mean from that. Well as she goes on in the chapter she explains how she sees the world different then when she was younger and she know sees the nightmare that she has been living. She even begins to say that “If I could have a baby then I obviously wasn’t a lesbian was crowded into my minds tiniest corner by the massive pushing in of fear, guilt, and self revulsion” (241). Here we see that she has learned something from the experience of being pregnant and that she has overcome her fears. She wrote this book to give some insight on the life of a black person during the 1940’s and what she had been through. In this she puts her writing in a way that the reader could feel her pain and suffering which is what happened as I read this story.
The last few pages of the final chapter...

Similar Essays