Thesis on "Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged"

Thesis 7 pages (2230 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou is one of America's most well-known and best loved poets. Due to her status as an African-American female, however, the country and its other citizens did not always treat her with the same respect and honor that she has now. In her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou retells the story of her growing up in a racist and otherwise harsh world, and what it meant to be a black girl growing up in those harsh times. It would be a mistake, though, to think that her African-American identity was the only thing that defined her character and caused her to grow into the woman she became. The color of her skin is not even the most important factor in her growing up, either.

Though many of the incidents and observations retold in the book directly and explicitly relate to the issue of race and racism, other factors stand out in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as being far more important influences on Maya Angelou's life and causing her to be the person that she is today. As critic Francoise Lionnet out it, "She creates an allegory of the feminine condition which cuts across historical, social, and racial lines" (qtd. In Manora, 363). It is her relationships with other people that really shaped Angelou's character more than anything else. Specifically, Maya's search for love causes her strife and heartache, but also ends up giving her hope in even the most unlikely of circumstances. Interestingly, though Lionnet notices her femininity, the relationships Angelou forma that stand out in importance in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings are mostly with men; it is the men in Maya Angelou's life that for better or worse have truly shaped her.

Even Maya's name came from a man rather than a woman, and one of the most important men in her life -- her brother Bailey. Though her mother named her Marguerite, Bailey could no pronounce this name as a small child, and referred to his baby sister as "mya sister," which developed into Maya, the name almost everyone calls her and which she most identifies with (Angelou, Chapter 10). Throughout her childhood, Maya considers Bailey the most important person in her life (Angelou, Chapter 2). He is the only anchor she has -- the only piece of her life with any regularity in it. They spend a lot of their time together, and the two make all of their major moves together for the first decade or so of her life. The two even believe that their mother is dead, and find comfort in each other as the only members of their immediate family (Angelou, Chapter 8). Bailey also sticks up for Maya whenever she is being teased, which strengthens her reliance on him even more. The two siblings obviously love each other very much, and love is what Maya is after in much of the book.

Love is also something that Bailey is after, in more senses than one. Maya's relationship with her brother is so close that she actually ends up standing guard outside a tent while Bailey is inside fooling around with a girl and eventually losing his virginity (Angelou, Chapter 21). The closeness exhibited in the relationship between Maya and Bailey at this point is somewhat startling, but it is not altogether unexpected. Maya's sexuality bean at a very young age, before she had any sense of what it was or any way to control the things that happened, and in fact much of the book deals with her attempts to come to terms with her own sexuality and find healthy ways to express it. Her association with Bailey in his sexual exploits is one way of making the subject safe; he is the male figure who most protects and loves her.

May's love and trust of Bailey, even in regards to sexual matters, begins much earlier in her life than in the scene out side the tent. When Maya is raped, it is fear for Bailey's life that keeps her quiet at first, and then he is the person that convinces her to reveal the identity of her rapist (Angelou, Chapter 12). Mr. Freeman, the man who first introduces Maya to sex and sexuality, is also a hugely important factor in her life, though of a much more negative sort than Bailey. She actually enjoys his first advances on her, which involve her being held while he pleasures himself (Angelou, Chapter 11). She has no idea what's really going on, but knows that she is not receiving enough love to make her happy, and the closeness she has to Mr. Freeman during these instances seems to fill some of that void.

At the same time, his other actions cause her great distress. After these incidents, Mr. Freeman ignores Maya for weeks at a time, which hurts her because the one grown man that has shown her what she fells is real affection appears to be shunning her. Also, she does not understand why he threatens to kill Bailey if she tells anyone what's going on. Because she finds the closeness and being held enjoyable -- and it is fairly obvious that Mr. Freeman derives some pleasure from it -- she does not know why it would be a bad ting for other people to know about. At one point she says, "There was an army of adults, whose motives and movements I just couldn't understand and who made no effort to understand mine" (Angelou, Chapter 11). For much of her childhood, Angelou feels disconnected from almost everyone except her brother. Perhaps it is the male companionship she felt in her youth that kept her in significant male relationships.

One major indicator and explanation of May's level of disconnect in her childhood and into her early adolescence was her lack of a father figure. When Big Bailey, Bailey and Maya's father, comes for a visit, Maya hardly recognizes him, and regards him as a stranger (Angelou, Chapter 9). This lack of a relationship is almost as significant as the relationship with Bailey. In fact, it is largely because Maya does not have this connection with her father that her bond with Bailey grows so close. Bailey acts out the father role in many ways, most of them with more benefit to Maya then when she plays the "baby" while he's inside the tent playing "house." Bailey is Maya's protector and confidant, and she admires him for his strength and his other good qualities. This is the way that most children look at their father when that relationship is a healthy one, which it obviously is not here.

Maya's relationship is not especially good with either of her biological parents, as she was raised almost entirely by her grandmother. In fact, when Big Bailey drops her and Bailey off at her mother Vivian's house, Angelou notes that "He was a stranger, and if he chose to leave us with a stranger, it was all of one piece" (Angelou, Chapter 9). This statement indicates not just how Angelou feels about her parents, but really how she feels towards much of the world. Though her race is not the most important factor in determining her eventual identity, it certainly comes into play, even when Maya ends up in the far more liberal and accepting San Francisco. She is especially concerned with her dark skin and kinky hair, which make her unlike other people -- even other African-Americans -- that she knows. When her father first comes to visit, she thinks that he talks like a white man (Angelou, Chapter 9). One of her first associations with her father, then, is of an intense and ever-present separation that Angelou feels and is constantly reminded of in the small and racially divided town of Stamps, where she lives with her grandmother and brother. Instead of feeling close to him, or even feeling shy but drawn to him, Maya is repelled by a man who sounds as if he belongs on the other side of life -- or, more accurately, the knowledge that this man is her father seems to solidify and clarify Maya's belief in herself as the other. As Yolanda M. Manora puts it, "This Black woman, positioned at the interstices of race and gender, being non-white and non-male, becomes for the purposes of the hegemonic order, the Other of the Other" (Manora, 364). Almost all of Maya's relationships, especially with men, tend to leave her feeling estranged and unloved, with Bailey the only major exception.

There is a very important minor exception that occurs about half-way through the book, however. Though Maya never meets Joe Louis, his fight is immensely important to her and the crowd of listener's in Momma's store in stamps. Maya sees his fight defending his heavyweight championship as a sort of last-ditch effort to prove that African-Americans had some worth. She depends… READ MORE

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