Maya Angelou Figurative Language

Maya Angelou’s autobiography, detailing her life from age three, when she was sent by her father to live with her grandmother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas, to age 16, when she became a mother, discusses her growth from a precocious but insecure child to a strong, independent woman. The autobiography reads like a coming-of-age fiction novel, for Angelou writes in such a way that she is essentially telling a story, utilizing literary techniques such as thematic development, symbolism, and figurative language, devices commonly found in fictional works. However, the book is classified as an autobiography that primarily comments on racism, sexism, and personal growth. Angelou introduces a main topic of her novel, her feelings of isolation

from the other Southern African-American children, at the very beginning of the book when she depicts herself standing in front of her church, attempting to recite a poem, but only being able to remember the first two lines, “What you looking at me for?/ I didn’t come to stay” (1). Not only does this situation mark Angelou as being starkly different from the other children, but these lines also indicate the two major ideas in the novel, Angelou’s insecurity and her constant moves from one city to another, the first displacement being when her father “shipped [Bailey and her] home to [her father’s] mother” when she was just three years old (5).

Moreover, Angelou’s profound understanding of the topic of the African-American woman’s struggle manifests itself throughout the novel, for she can severely critique the racism and sexism surrounding people of her race and gender, yet still learn to harbor a great love for all people. She understands that “growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl,” but that “being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat”

(4). Through this statement, Maya again asserts the topic of her story, the racism, sexism, and isolation that she felt for most of her life and how her troubled childhood and “threaten[ing]” feelings of displacement resulted in her vulnerable nature. Despite the harsh themes shrouding her turbulent childhood, Angelou chooses to focus on a more positive topic, personal growth and redemption, illustrated clearly when she fights for and earns a job as a the first African American streetcar driver in San Francisco. In essence, due to Angelou’s thoughtful and pensive nature, she illuminates plainly the many profound topics in her autobiography.
Audience
From the very beginning of the novel, Angelou makes it clear that she will primarily be discussing racism and sexism through the perspective of an older, wiser Angelou trying to make sense of the suffering that she faced as a child in a pensive yet comical manner. The fact that the autobiography was published a few years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X gave it its purpose— to reiterate the harshness of African American life and give fuel to the Civil Rights movement while still maintaining its status as a coming of age novel that all audiences could relate to. At the beginning, Angelou is clearly frustrated with the suffering that the African Americans in Stamps have to endure, particularly during cotton picking season, in which they spend long, hot days picking cotton only to return home “dirt-disappointed” and unable to pay the “staggering bill that waited on them at the white commissary downtown” (8). Angelou spends much of the novel trying to find validation for the suffering she and her people have gone through, adopting a very pensive and philosophical tone. This tone is illustrated lucidly in many of Angelou’s musings about childhood and race, chiefly at the part in which she equates “[being] left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing” to “[experiencing] the the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision” (271). She then moves on to state that the “Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature” and that the “fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with… belligerence” as many remain ignorant of the fact that these final characteristics are the “inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors” (272). This vivid description of childhood for the African American female as a tightrope above an abyss of uncertainty, surrounded by a “tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power,” elucidates Angelou’s purpose, to further the discussion of racism and sexism by utilizing her acquired knowledge to make sense of her turbulent childhood (272). However, the tone that Angelou adopts to further her purpose is not always so heavy and philosophical, for she often employs humor to comment on serious issues she observed as a child. For example, a recurring motif in the novel is the lack of educational opportunities afforded to African Americans, yet Angelou, through her mother’s proclamation that “Sympathy is next to shit in the dictionary, and I can’t even read,” manages to infuse humor into the solemn topic of illiteracy. Essentially, through her philosophical yet humorous tone, Angelou successfully comments on racism, sexism, and the multitude of other struggles she faced as a child growing up in a deeply racist America.
Details
The most poignant details in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings surround the topic of Mr. Freeman’s raping of Angelou and her escape from her father, Bailey Sr; these details serve to illustrate Angelou’s turbulent childhood while also offering the reader hope that suffering is eventually relieved. The first major event, the rape, is very briefly described in the novel, yet its aftereffects cast a dark shadow over the majority of the book. The rape renders Angelou mute and vulnerable for many years after the event, which was never handled properly in her mother’s home. After Angelou stopped talking to everyone except her brother, Bailey Jr., she “began to listen to everything… [hoping] that after [she] had heard all the sounds, really heard them and packed them down, deep in [her] ears, the world would be quiet around [her]” (87). Through this description of one effect of being raped, Angelou lucidly illustrates how vulnerable she had become, essentially unable to talk, and how desperately she began to search for peace and coherence in life. However, her family in St. Louis could not understand her behavior, and, after some time they began to call her “impudent” for her “muteness” and eventually sent her back to Stamps, apparently because they could not tolerate her “grim presence,” (88) and so into the “cocoon” of Stamps Angelou “crept” (89). Ironically, the rampant racism in Stamps does not prevent Angelou from calling it her “cocoon,” or safe place; it is almost as if the big city of St. Louis with its crowds of people of all ethnic backgrounds was harder for Angelou to bear than the racist, but familiar hometown that she had always known, that her retreat into childhood was preferable to the dark adult world she was exposed to in St. Louis. Additionally, upon her arrival at Stamps, Angelou notes the dramatic change in her life and character, for now, to her, “Sounds came dully” and “Colors weren’t true either, but rather a vague assortment of shaded pastels that indicated not so much color as faded familiarities” (92). Through these details, Angelou illustrates the profound effect that the rape had on her, for much of her life after the rape became clouded by the embarrassment of the aforementioned crime, and, just as the sounds lost their beauty and colors lost their brightness, Angelou lost her passionate liveliness. Perhaps the second most important event in the novel is Angelou’s escape from her father after she had been attacked by his girlfriend and generally neglected by him. Angelou’s decision to abandon her father depicts the first time in the novel in which she acted independently, displaying true courage after a lifetime of suffering from feelings of inadequacy and abandonment. In this situation, Angelou is the one leaving by the force of her own will, allowing her to finally feel liberated. She then “[sets] to thinking about [her] future,” and this detail about her thoughts upon leaving her father illustrate that Angelou will now begin to make her own decisions instead of allowing others to dominate her choices in life (250). By thoroughly detailing these major events in her life, Angelou further asserts the themes of suffering, silence, abandonment, and eventual triumph in a vivid and relatable manner.
Diction
Due to the nature of this novel, an autobiography, it makes absolute sense for it to be narrated in the first person.

Angelou’s choice to make herself the narrator of her autobiography is therefore a sensible one, yet that does not immediately signify that she is the epitome of a reliable narrator. For one, the events that she recounts occurred in her early childhood, some happened at the age of three, and for Angelou to discuss the details of her childhood at such length is questionable, for how much can one accurately remember of those tender years? Even though the events in her life may be true, due to the fact that Angelou is writing the entirety of her early life from memory interferes somewhat with the writing of this novel and the heavy meanings that Angelou attributes to various events. For example, at the beginning of the novel Angelou writes clearly that "In cotton-picking time the late afternoons revealed the harshness of Black Southern life, which in the early morning had been softened by nature's blessing of grogginess, forgetfulness and the soft lamplight" (9). It is difficult to imagine that a three year old would be so sensitive to plight of African Americans in the South to be able to remember and detail so vividly the conditions they were subjected to and how different times of the day caused a change in their characters, yet Angelou appears to. Her analysis of memories from her childhood do not purely represent a child’s voice, but it does allow the

reader to discern the symbolic effects that certain events and words, such as the way people described Angelou and her brother as “poor little motherless darlings,” a recurring description throughout the novel, possessed (5). Furthermore, Maya writes that “like most children, [she] thought if [she] could face the worst danger voluntarily and triumph, [she] would forever have power over it” (10). Again, this profound thought seems beyond a child, for most children would not willingly confront danger. The realization that overcoming obstacles transforms one into a stronger individual generally comes much later in life, not at the young age of five. Here, Angelou’s adult wisdom clearly influences her portrayal of her five year old mind. Essentially, for the sole reason that Angelou is an adult while writing a novel detailing and analyzing her childhood years, she proves to be, as a narrator, reliable only to a certain extent, yet this pairing of an adult and child Angelou create an interesting experience for the reader.
Organization
If I had to rate this book on a scale from one to five, five being the highest, I would most certainly give it a five for the beauty of its language, the relevance of its message, and its belief that there is always hope even in the darkest of times. “‘What you looking at me for?/ I didn’t come to stay’” is how this novel begins, as a poem, and the poetic nature of this autobiography remains throughout the entire story, through its highs and lows (1). The vivid and elegant details that Angelou employs to describe various events in her life, from her literary discussions with Mrs. Flowers to the hardships faced by the African Americans in Stamps to her journey to regain her voice, make this novel an artistic piece with beautiful flourishes of language that can stand resolute against any great work of fiction. In addition, Angelou’s assertion that the struggles faced by teenagers, especially colored ones, in a society that continues to struggle with issues pertaining to race, is a valid one which I believe should be discussed more frequently and at greater depth, which Angelou does quite fluently. Moreover, the pertinence and universality of her autobiography’s primary message that suffering is not eternal resonated strongly with me, for Angelou’s ability to find comfort and happiness even in the darkest of times, particularly the period following her rape, proves that hope exists even in the most desperate of situations, and the beauty and relevance of this message is what drew me to this novel, and what will draw succeeding generations of readers to this timeless piece. Finally, the conclusion of Angelou’s autobiography, not truly happy nor sad, but content, personally makes me want to read the six other volumes in the series so that I can observe how Angelou fully developed into the woman that so eloquently represented not only her race and gender, but who also spoke for humanity.