I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Rhetorical Analysis

Maya Angelou, a black woman, clearly shows her knowledge of the black community. Within her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” she speaks about the troubles of blacks oppression. Before ever writing she has ethos from living within the black society. This furthers her perspective as well as reinstates her theme of blacks being the stronger race for everything they have to deal with. Altogether Angelou displays in chapter nineteen that because of a fight with both discrimination and oppression blacks have became the stronger race. Angelou uses her relevancy of character and ethos by documenting on her life as a black woman. This is extremely important for it gives the reader a validation of the facts on which she remarks. Angelou’s character

is exposed to the reader even before we dive into the pages that she states as her life. Angelou was a civil rights activist who worked along Martin Luther King Jr. as well as working extremely close with Oprah. This woman is incredibly factual and more than credible. This promotes an understanding to her audience.

Chapter nineteen begins with dialogue about the fight between a black and white man; The dialogue states about how the black man is obviously going to win the fight and how they are not worried because they know he must. This is included for the readers understanding. Through this dialogue we can find how they think it is necessary to prove that they are the stronger. Next we understand through Angelou’s own voice why it is so important for them to be stronger through her quote: “I wondered if the announcer gave any thought to the fact that he was addressing as “ladies and gentlemen” all the Negroes around the world who sat sweating and prayed, glued to their “masters voice.”” The reason why it is so important to be stronger is because they have had to be for all these years. When some white person disrespected them, ridiculed them, or was cruel to them they had to be the stronger person and not speak back. They had to be the stronger person and not fight with them when they killed their brothers. They had to be the stronger person when they were enslaved and took beatings from their masters. Now it was their time to show the strength that had been locked away from centuries and it was the time to finally fight

back. The way she depicts this is suppose to unravel emotion through pathos because of all the years of never being able to fight back. Angelou shows that everyone believes that Louis, the black boxer, must win because strength is the only thing they have had all along. Through slavery, through Jim Crow laws, and through discrimination they were only ever allowed to keep their strength.

Following the statements of the previous paragraph, Angelou begins to tell how Louis is starting to lose the fight. She then begins to mention how “Her race groaned.” The fall of this fight would be the fall of their entire race. She goes on to conclude that “It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful.” She tells us in extreme detail why it is important for the blacks to win. Winning means justice. Winning means strength. Winning means no more cries for help. Winning means respect for once. Lastly, she ends this chapter with the rise of Louis once again. The most significant part of the ending is the colloquial she uses and the tone the ending gives off. The announcer goes “The winnah, and still heavyweight champeen of the world… Joe Louis.” Although this could have easily just been the announcer trying to drag out his words it could just as easily been the fact that blacks felt the whole world was finally with them

now. The whole world was celebratory with the blacks. Angelou furthers her own celebratory tone by stating the customers eating candy bars like it was Christmas and and drank Coke like ambrosia. This celebratory tone further implies the theme of this chapter being that blacks must be the stronger of the races. In conclusion, Angelou shows the discrimination and oppression blacks have dealt with through specific examples of these. She states about hangings, slavery and rape which are all incredibly sensitive topics to show pathos to her readership. She also furthers her point with her strong ethos from growing up and being in the black community. Altogether the winning of Joe Louis was the winning of the black man in a racial world.