Once again, we’re reading a novel that focuses strongly on the topic of race. Kindred never held back when showing us the cruelty of slavery, and it seems that I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings isn’t going to hold back on anything either. Caged Bird may take place over a century after the events of Kindred, hardly enough, Caged Bird really shows that the conflict between blacks and whites is far from over.
It seems that Caged Bird uses Symbolic Codes to allow the conflicts of its story to have more of a presence. To refresh our memories, the Symbolic Code
“Generates unresolvable oppositions (what are called “antitheses”) that structure a given conflict, and ultimately reinforce dominant cultural codes (controlling values)”
It seems obvious to me that the oppositions among race are used to reinforce the controlling values of this story. After reading Sofia’s blog, we established that these values have something to do with personal growth and identity crisis. Maya Angelou isn’t afraid of showing the ugliness of her past. She proves that past events, no matter good or bad, can have a huge impact on who we are and who we become. I would argue that the controlling values of “When you’re happy with who you are and aren’t discouraged by what people think of you, you are aren’t influenced to change your identity” and “When you aren’t happy with who you are and what people think of you, you are influenced to change your identity” exist within the story of Caged Bird as well.
The terms “black” and “white” in Caged Bird don’t just describe different skin tones of people. They define a different kind of people. Stigmas and stereotypes exist in this story.
“I knew that once I put it on I’d look like a movie star. (It was silk and that made up for the awful color.) I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right in the world” (2).
Right away we are introduced to this stereotype of white girls being known as “sweet,” clean, pure, and beautiful, while little black girls are thought to be “ugly.”
“Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let me straighten?” (2)
As we read further into the book, we witness the sadness of how Angelou and her brother Bailey, black children, are greeted into Arkansas.
“The town reacted to us as its inhabitants had reacted to all things new before our coming. In regard us a while without curiosity but with caution, and after we were seen to be harmless (and children) it closed in around us, as a real mother embraces a stranger’s child. Warmly, but not too familiarly” (6).
We see the ugliness of life for blacks and the relentless oppression.
“But I had seen the fingers cut by the mean little cotton bolls, and I had witnessed the backs and shoulders and arms and legs resisting any further demands.
Some of the workers would leave their sacks at the Store to be picked up the following morning, but a few had to take them home for repairs. I winced to picture them sewing the coarse material under a coal-oil lamp with fingers stiffening from the day’s work. In too few hours they would have to walk back to Sister Henderson’s Store, get vittles and load, again, onto the trucks. Then they would face another day of trying to earn enough for the whole year with the heavy knowledge that they were going to end the season as they started it. Without the money or credit necessary to sustain a family for three months” (8-9).
We also notice the different stereotypes between men and women.
“The ‘boys’? Those cement faces and eyes of hate that burned the clothes off you if they happened to see you lounging on the main street downtown on Saturday. Boys? It seems that youth had never happened to them. Boys? No, rather men who were covered with graves’ dust and age without beauty or learning. The ugliness and rottenness of old abominations” (17-18).
As I try not to be offended here, men in this story are looked at with the familiar stereotype of sex driven, rowdy, foolish, and uneducated. Women are thought to be proper, kind, and full of youth. These kind of stereotypes, of course, exist today, and have often been embraced due how embedded they are into our culture.
“He was the only Negro I knew, except for the school principal and the visiting teachers, who wore matching pants and jackets. When I learned that men’s clothes were sold like that and called suits, I remember thinking that somebody had been very bright, for it had made men look less manly, less threatening and a little more like women” (20).
Angelou is describing how her neighbor, Mr. McElroy, looked here. It’s actually quite funny to me.
Lastly, we wrap back around to the stereotypes of blacks and whites, and how whites are thought to be clean, while blacks are dirty.
“Each night in the bitterest winter we were forced to wash faces, arms, necks, legs and feet before going to bed” (27).
It seems that Angelou claims that blacks always tried their best to be clean, so that they were accepted by whites, but whites didn’t care about cleanliness, because they thought they were superior and always clean.
Whites were aloud to be mean, dirty, and “impudent” or disrespectful, because they didn’t have to prove their worth. There’s this one outrageous scene in chapter five where some young white girls, or “powhitetrash” as Angelou calls them, mock and imitate her grandmother as she stands at her porch and hums. It was clear that with this scene Angelou was using her grandmother, Annie, to symbolize a caged bird singing.
“At first they pretended seriousness. Then one of them wrapped her right arm in the crook of her left, pushed out of her mouth and started to hum. I realize that she was aping my grandmother” (30).
Here, Annie is “caged” by society to stand her ground and not reaction to what the white girls are doing, for she will not prove the stereotypes of black people to be correct. The scene gets pretty graphic, but basically the white girls go as far as sacrificing their own dignity just to try to hurt Annie.
“Whatever the contest had been out front, I knew Momma had won” (33).
So again, I believe that these oppositions reinforce the controlling values of the story and strength the conflict presented in it.
Group Four 
Enrico you did an amazing job describing symbolic code, you opened my eyes to seeing Annie has the caged bird and she sings to tell her story of the issues she faced in her life. You wrote, “Here, Annie is “caged” by society to stand her ground and not reaction to what the white girls are doing, for she will not prove the stereotypes of black people to be correct. The scene gets pretty graphic, but basically the white girls go as far as sacrificing their own dignity just to try to hurt Annie.” Which gives us the reasons of why the book is called I know why the caged bird sings, because Annie was locked up and couldn’t tell her story and know she is able to open herself up and tell her side of the story. But I do believe that this story can also be a culture code because if we look what Maya have faced people are still facing it. An African American person or any other race except for whites would see that we are constantly facing racial issues. Being that said it is a constant thing that is faced in these world. The cultural code speaks the familiar truths of existing cultural order, which if we think about it we are constantly and still are seeing racism in this world and it will continue if we as humans do not changed it. This is my point of view on how it can be a cultural code because it is something that is always repeated and has been read, seen, experienced and done to one another.
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What if who we are today effects how we remember past events?
After reading Jonathon Culler’s, “Story and Discourse in the Anaylsis of Narrative”, I have changed the direction and premise of my controlling values. Following this idea of discourse (interpretation) is the cause, and the story (events) is the effect, what if Maya Angelou’s whole autobiography is being shaped by the main idea she is trying to get across? What if the events that occurred didn’t actually mean anything, but her discourse, the purpose, made us interpret what she wanted us to? This all leads me to believe that the controlling values contexts are something along the lines of:
Context 1: Our past events, and memories, control who we become, our future identities.
Context 2: Our identity and how we view ourselves, pollutes the way we see our past.
I am still having difficulty coming up with the two purposes. Something I have been struggling with since writing my first blog post. But my brain is exploring new ideas, and it’s silence means that I am thinking. I believe the second context displays Culler’s idea of discourse well. Discourse shapes the story. We are never really present to what happened, we are responding to the interpretation of the story. Like Maya Angelou is doing with her past. She is shaping the events to convey the message she is trying to get across. Shaping her past to create this image/identity she has created of herself.
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So after listening to Kopp’s lecture on Jonathan Culler’s article “Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative” and then actually going back and reading most of it myself I have discovered a different interpretation of of the relation between story and discourse in “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.” In my blog I state our groups original idea, that Maya Angelou “proves that past events, no matter good or bad, can have a huge impact on who we are and who we become,” however according to Culler, that would not be entirely accurate. Culler believes, and there is substantial evidence to prove his claim, that it is not the story of a narrative that impacts discourse, but rather someone’s own discourse (interpretation) that impacts a certain discourse to take place. “I am claiming that the narratological analysis of a text requires one to treat the discourse as a representation of events which are conceived of as independent of and particular narrative perspective or presentation and which are thought of as having the properties of real events” (171). To explain his claim he uses the story of Oedipus. In the story who is convicted of the crime is depended upon one witness’ claim, not what actually happened. A telling of a story can never hold the true representation of the actual story, but is always the interpretation of the narrator, is what Culler is basically saying in his article. When taking Culler’s claim in to consideration we can say instead that it’s not the “past events” that impact “who we are and who we become,” rather it is how we interpret those “past events” that effects “who we are and who we become.” For instance, if one believes their story to prove that they were weak in the past then one might try to instead be stronger in the future. A perspective of a story is never what turely happened, though that does not mean that we should abandon the author’s interpretation or narrative.
Further in my blog I describe a scene between Annie and some young white girls and state that Annie is “ ‘caged’ by society” when technically Annie “caged” by society’s interpretation of black people (stereotype). As long as people views the actions of blacks to represent a stereotype Annie is forced to try and prove them wrong.
If we now focus on the title of the novel and the idea of an autobiography we can argue that Angelou is “caged” by her interpretation of her life to tell her story the way she does. If this was instead a biography and told by someone else it would probably be almost a completely different story. Now, let’s experiment with the title. The only way for a caged bird, perhaps a pet or captured creature, to sing a beautiful and happy song is if that bird views (interrupts) the “cage” as “not a cage,” but rather a home, given by a owner or observer that loves and cares for them. Angelou is not a happy bird mostly and sings a very tragic story (discourse/interpretation). She, just like everyone else, unless they open their mind, is “caged” by their own interpretation of their past and can not see it in any other light.
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Hey Rico,
Although you bring up a lot of great points, I think that you would do better with picking one and really focusing on it. I think that you best explored black vs white as the symbolic code within the text. You did a great job of using quotes to support your argument, but I am seeing different representations of each group in the text. White is established as higher as black in the society. However, real life examples, such as Momma’s encounter with the “powhitetrash,” reveal that the associations that are paired with race are inaccurate. The “powhitetrash” are ill-mannered and rude, despite (or because of) being white.
Gender, which is a whole different symbolic code of feminine vs masculine, is very interesting in the text. There are many women in the text that are shown in a positive light: Momma is strong and independent, Mother is beautiful and charming, and Grandmother is powerful and connected. Men, however, are a different story. The main example of a man in the text is Uncle Willie. Although Uncle Willie is a good person, he is considered less than a man because of his handicap. Ritie and Bailey’s uncles, although considered powerful and loved by the narrator, are still violent and criminal. Bailey himself is not technically a man, but gender provides an interesting barrier between the siblings. Bailey seems to be everything Ritie could be. Although they have the same skin tone, it is considered beautiful on Bailey and ugly on Ritie. This inequality reveals the separate expectations and judgements placed upon black boys and black girls in Ritie’s world.
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