Evaluate “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in relation to its depiction of social issues in the world.

 

The poem “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by the Nobel laureate American poetess Maya Angelou does not overtly depict social issues. However, the central metaphors used by Angelou – a caged bird and a free bird - can be read as her reading of race, gender, political and religious relations between the powerful and the powerless wherever they may be across the globe.

     At a surface level, the poem can be read as a narrative of a day of a bird in a cage and that of a “free” bird. At this point one may be forgiven for raising the question whether anyone was actually free. Turning back to the caged bird, its wings are clipped and the feet are shackled – thus, there is no hope for the bird of freedom. Interestingly, there is not much reference to the man or the woman that had locked up the bird in the cage. Looking at the cage bird, one evaluates one’s life in comparison to another’s life. Had the caged bird not seen the free bird enjoying its life, it probably would not have felt the way it did:

A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange sun’s rays
And dares to claim the sky.

However, it saw the free bird and the sight filled the caged bird with an impotent rage against its captivity. It expressed its rage against its captivity by stalking around the cage:

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage   

 

when that did not help, it started to sing “with a fearful trill” of the things it had never experienced due its captivity.   

          As pointed out in the introduction, though the poem does not speak directly about social issues, the central metaphors used by Angelou – a caged bird and a free bird - can be read as her reading of race, gender, political and religious relations between the powerful and the powerless. In that sense, the absent man, the cage, the caged bird, the sky and the free bird can be read as metaphorical representations of all oppressive manmade socio-political institutions such as government, religious institutions, education, and mass media (man); customs, norms, values, rules and regulations (cage), the oppressed man (the caged bird), a society free of oppressive socio-political institutions (sky), a person unoppressed by rules and regulations, etc. (free bird). The caged bird’s song stand for a cry against oppression as well as rallying call for the fellow oppressed. It also expresses the cage bird’s anger at being oppressed.

           Looking at the term “bars of rage”, such bars can be put up not only by the absent man but also by the bird (the oppressed). According to social theorists such as Althusar, people internalize norms and values as well as rules and regulations of a given society due to fear and shame. Consequently, they themselves restrict their own freedom. However, being forced to control their own freedom make them angry. William Blake in his famous poem “London” calls this process formation of “mind-forged manacles”. The bars imposed by both one’s society as well as one’s own mind had destroyed all the dreams the “caged bird” had and filled it with horror. Its pain is captured by the poetess succinctly in the penultimate stanza thus:      

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing

 

       The plight of the caged bird is not never-ending, the poetess warns in the final stanza. According to Angelou, the song of the oppressed was heard by those who dwell “on the distant hill”. Hills being places associated with rebellion, this could be read as a reference to future rebellions in response to oppression. Hence, the poem ends in a hopeful tone implying a better future for the oppressed.