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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In Chapter 12, Maya is left at home alone with Mr. Freeman, who sexually assaults her. She is only 8 at the time of the attack and passes out from the pain she endures. Mr. Freeman is dating her...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The bird in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem is yearning for a freedom he may find in the natural world. The poem is primarily concerned with the idea that because a bird is a natural creature, they...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Bertha Flowers is a well-to-do African American woman who occupies an important place in black society. She becomes an important person in Marguerite’s life for several reasons. She is one of the...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is an autobiography detailing the early life of Marguerite Johnson—who later becomes known as Maya Angelou, the famous poet. Angelou retells the story in her own...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The most obvious similarities between the two works are that they both express the adverse circumstances of African Americans in the decades after Emancipation. Paul Laurence Dunbar published...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
"I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" is about the consequences of racism, whereas "Ego-Tripping" is a celebration of the speaker's cultural identity and heritage. The former is a melancholy but...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Marguerite (Maya) and Bailey were raised by Annie Henderson (Momma), their paternal grandmother. Momma raised Maya and Bailey to be completely isolated from the wealthier part of rural Stamps,...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou's memoir addresses this question from both the white and black perspectives of the inhabitants of Stamps, Arkansas, where she spent the majority of her upbringing. From the perspective...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
When Maya was ten, her mother sent her to the house of Mrs. Cullinan to learn manners befitting of a lady. There she meets Glory, Mrs. Cullinan's cook. The woman's real name is Hallelujah. Mrs....
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Angelou states that, at one point in her childhood, the "angel of the candy counter" was exacting its revenge upon her for all of the stolen candy she had taken over the course of her life. This...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou mentions the decline of Japanese business as a result of World War II. This happens because Japanese people were forcibly moved to...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
William Johnson, Uncle Willie, is mostly described in chapter 2 of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. He is characterized by his disability; at just three years old, a baby sitter...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou's understanding of herself as a lyric and dramatic poet powerfully informs the style of her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Even the choice of title (borrowed from...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Mrs. Flowers is an important part of young Marguerite’s life. This is in large part because she teaches Marguerite firstly to love and respect books and secondly to understand the significance of...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In Chapter 19, Angelou directly quotes the commentator of the famed boxing match between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. Historically, this fight was important for two reasons: Louis was a black...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
A shy and inhibited girl, Marguerite "sopped" around her environment until one day when Mrs. Flowers throws her "a lifeline" and asks specifically for Marguerite to carry her purchases home with...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In chapter 18 of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, young Maya Angelou attends a church revival service and hears a long and emotional sermon on charity from the minister: "As I understand it,...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Marguerite hoped that the made-over lavender dress would make her white. Momma had put "ruffles on the hem and cute little tucks around the waist" of a "white woman's once-was-purple throw-away."...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In Stamps, Maya and Bailey have the advantage of a close and nurturing community to help in their growing up. As Maya describes in the first chapter of the book, once the people of Stamps see that...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Symbolism can be an effective technique in writing, and various examples of symbolism can be found in Maya Angelou’s novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Among the examples of symbolism in the...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Marguerite, Maya's character in the book, says she was around ten years old at the time the incident occurred.In Chapter 5, Marguerite describes the incident when the "powhitetrash" girls...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is challenged pretty often in public schools as having inappropriate content for high school readers. There are some sexual references which some consider too...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The eighth grade graduation in Stamps, Arkansas is a big deal to the black community, but the white speaker, Mr. Edward Donleavy, manages to quell the festive atmosphere fairly quickly with his...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Well, the root problem is the abuse that Marguerite suffered when she was living with her mother at the hands of her step-father. As Chapter 14 makes clear, the impact that this horrendous incident...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Clearly the first character that was a positive role model for Maya was Mrs. Bertha Flowers, who manages to get Maya to open up and love herself after the rape she endured. This event occurs in...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In order to answer this question, we must look at the context in which the poem was written. Maya Angelou spent some of the most formative years of her childhood in the racially segregated town of...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
There are some strong level of similarities between both Maya Johnson and Frado. The first level of similarity is that both women possess a great deal of unique individuality that cannot be fully...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Mrs. Henderson did not think that "whitefolks" could be talked to safely and reasonably. In life, Mrs. Henderson had always sought to teach Bailey and Marguerite the safest ways to interact with...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In Chapter 3, Maya relates how she makes an adventure out of measuring silver ladles of 'flour, mash, meal, sugar or corn' to accurate perfection. She tells us how delighted she is to develop an...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
A hyperbole is a literary device that over-exaggerates a particular detail or fact; this over-emphasis highlights the seriousness of a situation from a character's point of view. Take Marguerite's...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Young Marguerite makes the choice to speak to Mrs. Flowers because she senses that the older woman is different from the other adults in her life. Mrs. Flowers never makes Marguerite feel like...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya lies on the witness stand because of events that led up to her rape by Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman had molested her multiple times leading up to her rape (Chapter 11). When asked by the...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya and her brother Bailey are raised in Stamps, Arkansas by their grandmother, whom they call "Momma," after their parents abandon them. Momma runs a general store in town, whose revenue she uses...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
A metaphor is a direct comparison of two things by saying that object 1 is or was object 2. For instance, "my love is a rose." I'll identify a few metaphors in the novel to help you get...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In the book, Marguerite uses a metaphor to explain how she feels about her grandmother's store. She likens the store to "an unopened present from a stranger" when it stands "alone and empty in the...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Angelou employs many different elements of style in this novel, including dialect, allusion, symbol, hyperbole (exaggeration), similes and metaphors, etc. Angelou uses a variety of literary...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou admires Mrs. Flowers because she is someone who is classy, who has manners, and who introduces Angelou to the wonders of great literature, among other things. She is not only a role...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Bailey (Junior) changes in the course of Maya Angelou’s book in several ways. As both Maya (called Ritie, for Marguerite) and her brother are growing up, it is natural for them both to change and...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
When describing Mrs. Flowers, Maya Angelou is using sensory language to have her young narrator describe her older neighbor. Sensory language is the use of details from the five senses in order to...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya would probably define a good teacher as one who is accessible, attentive, and inspirational. Based on the story, Maya would probably consider Mrs. Bertha Flowers a phenomenal teacher. The...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The best answer to this question is C -- Mrs. Flowers is telling Marguerite that a person who does not go to school (more importantly, someone who is unable to go to school) is not necessarily...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
This incident occurs in Chapter 16 of this great autobiographical novel and concerns the author's first experience of working as hired help in a white household. Although her job starts off...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Florida Taylor is the deceased wife of one of Stamps' denizens, Mr. George Taylor. Florida Taylor had died the summer before, and George Taylor, who had been married to her for forty years, depends...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Angelou is able to illuminate the stakes as being high for African- Americans when Joe Louis was about to fight for the heavyweight championship against Primo Carnera. It was clear that African-...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Marguerite assists customers who buy goods at her grandmother's general store. The store is the hub of her family life in Stamps, and she describes it as her...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
When Marguerite first visits Mrs. Flowers, she doesn't know what to expect. She is surprised to notice that Mrs. Flowers's house smells like food, since she never imagined her doing normal things...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
There are many. Look at the first line of Chapter 34, the last line of Chapter 33, the last line of Chapter 30, the last line of Chapter 25, and many others where Angelou speaks of things of great...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Yes, Maya's relationship with Bailey changes through the course of the book. The easiest reason for this is that they grow up and need one another less. Look at the way they depend on one another...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The book could be used to teach a unit on autobiography. Although the experiences of Maya Angelou are going to be different from the students in your class, at the same time there will be certain...
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou named the book after one of her poems by the same name. The caged bird has clipped wings and tied feet. It sings of fear and sorrow, and its voice carries far away, although no one...
