Dec 25, 2009
Maya Angelou’s highly romantic “Caged Bird” first appeared in the collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? in 1983. Inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy,” Angelou contrasts the struggles of a bird attempting to rise above the limitations of adverse surroundings with the flight of a bird that is free. She seeks to create in the reader sentiment toward the plight of the misused, captured creature—a symbol of downtrodden African Americans and their experiences.
The first two stanzas contrast two birds. Lines 1 through 7 describe...
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