Sofia- “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

Summary

In her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou invites her reader to experience what it meant to grow up as a young African American woman in Stamps, Arkansas, where the practices of segregation, and the racism that justified such practices, were an everyday reality.

Angelou doesn’t hold back. Refusing to hide us from the dark events that occurred during her childhood. She portrays life in a very honest way. She drags us deep into her own memories, forcing us to see and feel her life from her eyes. She gives us all of it, the dark and traumatic, and the sweet, and melancholy, the small and oblivious. Displaying all the emotions of her childhood. She focuses on the importance of life as a whole. Not relying on one memory to explain how she became the phenomenal women she is today.

Each Chapter is presented as a different memory, a chronological order of important events she witnessed in her lifetime. She learned a valuable lesson from each event, following under the same network of controlling values. I will go more into depth on the network in the following section below. But finding this overall theme and connection was hard for me at first. Angelou is prone to hide meaning behind symbolism, something that began to frustrate me while reading the first couple of chapters. But as I progressed in the book, I found myself progressing as a reader, reading between the lines looking for the hidden meaning. I felt like an aspiring detective, on the path to gaining his/her shield. Reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was like trying to crack a code. A code this class fully prepared me for.

Reflecting on this Semester, using, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”

My mom had always joked that I was an unhealthy reader. She discussed it as an illness. Getting lost in book after book, no longer aware of reality. I will admit the way I read as an adolescent would be considered unhealthy to any normal person. Unable to put books down. I would read for twelve hours straight, cover to cover, racing to figure out the end. For some reason the end never felt satisfying. I would finish each book feeling cheated, empty, like something was missing. The books all seemed unfinished. Stories left unsaid. I blamed the books, the authors. I never thought to question me. My own thoughts. My intentions as a reader. It’s pretty selfish really when I look back on it. Blaming others for my own mishaps. The problem wasn’t the books. The issues hid behind my whole purpose for picking the book up. What I was reading for.

Elementary and grade school doesn’t prepare you for understanding how you should read a book. It focuses on teaching you how to do the action of reading. Caring less on whether or not the proper comprehension is there. Reading is seen as something you just do. Developing your own thought processes over time. Bad habits callusing over the years. My reading for, lead directly to my own unhealthy reading habits. I read for closure. The wrap up. The end. I never paid much attention to the nitty, gritty details. The in between, the author’s intended purpose. I was obsessed with the what happened, ignoring the how or why. If the what happened didn’t match up with what I had projected, then the book was deemed as damaged, tainted, and tossed on the lowest shelf of my mental bookcase. No longer relevant.

Who am I to place labels on books when my analysis is based solely on what I projected? This was an idea touched upon within the first couple of classes. Something that stuck with me, bobbing up and down like the tide dancing in the back of my mind. Did I really dislike the book? Or did the book not follow the rules and guidelines of my own projections? Unlike most questions, this is a question you’re not meant to have an answer to. It’s a question meant to provoke thought. An answer would signify I fully understand the complexity of the question. But understanding is something I most likely won’t find by the completion of this course. I do not believe the course was intended to actually answer any questions. The course did something way more than that. It got me to start asking them.

Stating the point of this whole course is leading me down the projection tunnel yet again. Another idea brought up, that stuck with me like gum. Projections are inevitable, but become aware that they are there. I am projecting the purpose of this course based off of what it has done for me. Which is a very limited narrow point of view. This course has taught me to widen my perspective a little more than that. Maybe this course was designed to affect all readers and writers differently. All at different stages in their lives, their writing career. For some students this course might have actually answered questions they have been pondering for quite some time now. Might have caused others to revisit questions thought to have been previously answered.

This whole experienced crashed down on me like one big giant revelation. I have lived a majority of my life with my mind stuck in a box, not willing to step out of it. Dr. Drew Kopp ripped open the tape with ease, causing me to peer through.

It’s funny the journey your own writing can take you on. We focus a majority of our grade school experience focusing on other people’s writing. What would happen if you took a step back and looked through your own using the same safety glasses. What would we find hidden in the depths? Starting this narrative I had no idea what it was going to become, what ideas I was going to draw from, what direction I was going to take it. I just began writing. I placed pen down on paper and let the mini revelations come to surface.

I always thought my book choice for this course was random. I had put little to no thought into choosing, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, written by Maya Angelou. It was just a novel I told myself I wanted to read. It didn’t even fit under my prefered genre choice. My mind just told me that it was the one. I had run out of books that enticed me, and this was one that was always left on the bottom of my reading list. So I thought, might as well. Being a lengthy and dense two hundred and eighty nine pages, my group decided to read it last. An obstacle we could tackle after well needed practice. But after reading the first two novels I found myself regretting my choice. Wishing I had put more thought into it, more research. The first two books interested me, kept me reading, the little devil on my shoulder enticing me to keep going, to get to the end. I didn’t feel that way about Angelou’s, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I didn’t feel the need to finish.

The first few chapters only reassured my regret. I was bored. There seemed to be no finish line. Each chapter seemed to have no point. Scattered memories filling the pages. There was no end to keep me motivated, no finish line. I couldn’t help but place the book down.

I arrived to class the next day flustered and humiliated. Frustrated and mortified I had picked such a bland dense book. This was the book I would ultimately have to analyze at the end of the semester. Why didn’t I pick a murder mystery? Why didn’t I stick with what I was used to? My frustration and embarrassment only deepened when I was asked to state what I believed to be the novel’s controlling values. For those of you who don’t know, and I am assuming most of you don’t know, unless you’ve just so happened upon Robert McKee’s “Structure and Meaning,” chapter six of his book Story. Controlling values, are the story’s central themes and ideas. They are subject to change throughout the book, as you begin to grasp more of the story’s concept. But two values, controlling and opposing, are usually very present, battling back and forth throughout the novel. Controlling being the value which wins out in the end. Its pretty complicated stuff, but after working on it all semester, and accomplishing a set of values for each of the previous books, I was expected to have a general idea of the values reoccuring in, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

I sat there baffled while each group before me laid out a set of values, confident in their own thoughts and ideas. I felt stupid, unsure. How was everyone else able to just understand so easily? I blamed the book. If I picked a different novel I wouldn’t be having so much difficulty. My turn came, and I felt like a kindergartner at a high school spelling bee. I was ill prepared and it was obvious. Time was on my side though. Only two minutes left of class, my mindless babble didn’t have to keep going for much longer.

If you’ve ever taken a class with Dr. Drew Kopp, then you would understand my train of thought was mistaken. Time wasn’t going to stop Kopp from picking my brain, forcing my mind to ask those pesky questions it couldn’t be bothered with asking myself.

“I don’t think you’ve taken the time to think…” He said something along those lines. Embarrassment yet again. But he was right. I didn’t take the time to think. I got confused, and annoyed with Angelou’s narrative, bouncing around ideas, nothing seemed to connect. I was regressing. I don’t like the book, I told myself. In reality I just didn’t understand it.

I forget the actual dialogue and conversation that occurred after, but it was important. It was my “ah hah” moment, my break through.

“I just can’t find one dominant controlling value, each chapter focuses on a different theme, a different idea.” My frustration powered through, reading off each poorly written theme.

Kopp’s eyes widened, a smirk, “Well what if all those ideas were connected?”

Just like that, the fog finally cleared.

What if everything was connected? The question bobbed in the back of my mind. I continued reading. I was reading for meaning. Reading to find the hidden message. I found beauty in Angelou’s symbolism. Every word meant something, placed there for a reason. I reread every line, asking myself why. The end wasn’t the point. It wasn’t Angelou’s purpose. The end didn’t matter. It was the journey. The slow, steady, journey. Reading for the wrong reason made me lose insight. I was almost cheated out of a book, I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed. I wasn’t asking myself the right questions.

The controlling values for I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings were hidden in the depths of the pages. I had to go back and think why the book was written in the first place. What was Angelou’s purpose? Why does Angelou transition from good memories to bad? Why does she bring up issues of race, and then issues of oppression. What did they all have in common? The answer was right in front of me. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is written like an autobiography. Each chapter is an event from Angelou’s own past. Angelou is the common factor. All these events, and memories ultimately shaped Maya Angelou into who she has become today. This all got me thinking about premise,

“the idea that inspires the writer’s desire to create a story” (McKee pg.112).

Before I could find the answer, I needed to find the “what if.”

What if we reexamine our life, past events, and identity? That’s what Angelou is essentially doing. Reexamining her past. The events that stuck with her. The memories that weigh her down. The traumatic, the inspirational, the sad, the happy. It’s human nature to examine our past, it helps us find our identities. But Angelou brings up a very important point. All of our past shapes us. Bad and good. You can’t pick and choose. She paints a brutally honest picture of her life unafraid to highlight the ugly. An example of the ugly is perfectly demonstrated right smack in the beginning of the book,

“Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blonde, would take place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let me straighten?”(Angelou, 2).

But the ugly is matched up with beauty. She creates imagery out of thin air, the beauty spilling out all over the page,

“I loved her most at those times. She was like a pretty kite that floated just above my head” (Angelou, 65).

She has mastered the art of producing aesthetic emotion,

“the simultaneous encounter of thought and feeling.”

Another concept brought up in McKee’s “Structure and Meaning”:

“Aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality” (McKee, 111).

Doesn’t that sound a whole lot like using your past to understand/discover your identity? It’s almost like Angelou modeled her book around this concept.

After weeks of thought and playing around with tons of unfinished ideas, and open ended sentences, my group and I finally came up with a set of controlling values we were proud of.

I felt like my journey was done. I accomplished what I needed to accomplish, and the rest will follow. Once again I found my mind making false statements, giving me a false sense of certainty. My controlling values were too broad. Yes, they looked pretty on paper, neat, wrapped tight in a bow. But what did they mean? Looking back on them now I honestly couldn’t tell you. These controlling values weren’t meant to provoke thought, they were meant to end thought. Isn’t that interesting? I don’t only read for the end, I live my life searching for the end in everything. Just like Angelou throughout her whole novel, I try to escape the now. She searched for the light at the end of each tunnel, the what can be. By the end of her novel Angelou learns it’s not about the end, it’s all about the ride, the nitty gritty details, the how. I found myself learning right along side of her. Found myself facing the same issues. My own projections for sure. We find what we want out of texts, try fixing our own problems using another’s words.

I have a thing for tying up loose ends. An obsession with ending things. I search for the answer in every question, the final say in every argument. I never learned that some things are meant to be unsaid, some questions are meant to go unanswered, some ideas are meant to go unfinished. Ideas are like space, and infinite amount of possibilities. Being a writer isn’t about finding the end to these ideas, it’s about exploring all of these possibilities. Jonathan Culler delves deeper into this idea of infinite amount of possibilities perfectly in his book, The Pursuit of Signs Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction, chapter 9, “Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative.” Before you can fully understand why projections occur, and why there are multiple viewpoints to every story, you first need to become familiar with the difference between story, and discourse.

According to Culler “story” is,

“a sequence of actions or events, conceived as independent of their manifestation in discourse,”

and discourse is,

“the discursive presentation or narration of events.” (Culler, 170).

To place into simpler terms “story” is the what happened, “discourse” being the why, the interpretation. This is where things start to get tricky. Attempting to understand Culler’s theory is like opening a jack in the box. You have no say when the revelations are going to come, or when the ideas are going to collapse on themselves. It is popular belief that story comes first and discourse follows. Culler puts things in a whole new perspective. What if the what happened is affected by the purpose. What if our purpose for writing something affects how we see the chain of events that occurred. This got me rethinking the whole purpose behind Maya Angelou’s memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

I had originally thought that Maya Angelou’s past shaped her to be the woman she portrayed herself to have become. Leading to her purpose for writing the novel, our past creates who we are. Culler created a new lense, a new telescope uncovering a whole alternate point of view. What if Maya Angelou’s current sense of self affected the way she remembered her past. What if she altered the story, the chain of events to fit her purpose? Projection is inevitable. So what if Angelou is projecting onto her own past unwillingly. Cutting the puzzle pieces to make them fit.

Now let’s take it one step further. What if each of Angelou’s readers are doing the exact same thing. Me included. What if our intended purpose whatever that may be, affects how we read through I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? What if our own discourse is affecting the story. This all ties into Cullers theory that there are,

“various contrasting ways of viewing and telling any given story (Culler, 170)”.

Now you’re probably wondering how I got from point A to point B. I started off talking about forming controlling values, and took an unexpected left turn, onto “Story and Discourse” lane. But what I have been trying to demonstrate is that everything is interconnected. I can’t come close to understanding the controlling values for Angelou’s novel without first understanding the controlling values I come up with, will ultimately be my own projections. My own discourse for Angelou’s story. Books are never simply beginning, middle and end. There and infinite amount of possibilities. There are an infinite amount of controlling values floating in book purgatory, every time you read is a new opportunity to grab a new one and explore it.

With Culler’s theories fresh in my mind, I decided to tackle a more specific set of controlling values, this time fully aware of all the underlying factors that go into it. Before I could began drafting I had to ask myself one important question. What question was I trying to answer reading, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings? Understanding you need to ask yourself that question is the hard part, the answer and everything else slowly follows. So what question was I trying to answer? The purpose I projected onto Angelou’s novel was, how does our past affect the present? Or to be more specific how does handling our past affect who we are? The knots in my brain immediately unraveled.

Even though I stated previously that controlling values are usually focused on the reader’s own projections, it doesn’t mean they can be based solely on assumption. A set of controlling values need to be proven. I picture controlling values as the angel and devil perched on your shoulder. Each one battling for the spotlight. If drafted correctly your controlling values should be seen battling throughout the novel. Each one fighting to be on top.

My controlling values, aren’t mere projections, they are proven throughout Angelou’s novel. I can pick out excerpts and acknowledge where each controlling value shines and then falls. For a more broader point of view, I can even summarize how the ending of each chapter is the rise or defeat of a value. Angelou starts us off with the prologue looking towards the future, the what if , the alternate better ending. Angelou is purposely forgetting about her past focusing on the present, imagining the ending of her life. As I write this I realize my above controlling values first purpose should include this idea of focusing and living for the future. It coincides with all the ideas touched on previously. Angelou is essentially doing what I have come accustomed to doing. Daydreaming about alternate endings. This concept is proven on page 2,

“I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right in with the world.”

Angelou is ignoring the bigger picture, focusing on all the small crumbs, forgetting there was once a whole cake. The angel vanished by the devil.

In chapter four Angelou contradicts the mindset she places us in the Prologue. Instead of narrowing her image on one tiny crumb, Angelou zooms out the lense providing the whole cake. This fits controlling value two’s purpose: When you allow yourself access to your whole past, you recognize all the small details which make you, you. This chapter is Angelou’s first turning point, where she begins to add up all the small details, refocusing the picture. This is proven on page 21, when Angelou describes her next door neighbor Mr. McElroy. When she was younger Angelou placed Mr. McElroy on a pedestal. She admired his fancy suits, the fancy details must have meant Mr. McElroy was a “negro” of utmost importance. But after painting this picture Angelou then states,

“I see him now as a very simple man.”

She acknowledges the fact that she once focused on the crumb, but reflecting back on it now, has changed her opinion. The angel slowly resurfacing.

These two turning points in the novel are my angel and devil controlling values surfacing. My projections proved right out on the silver screen. But if I were two go back and reanalyze this specific instance and thought, I would probably see everything a whole lot differently. That’s the funny thing about life, past, and memory. Controlling values, are essentially a set of morals, and infinite amount of ideas, constantly dancing around infinity, they are constantly changing. Our morals, our reading for, our past, and how we remember it is constantly changing. Everytime I re read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I see a whole different story play out before me. I whole new set of values climb to the surface. Controlling values are like water, ever changing, my issues began with thinking I could treat them like hard cement. Once I was able to understand controlling values was the equation, not the answer, I was finally able to see the book for what it was.

After coming to the conclusion that everything I knew about the construction of a story was a lie I started pulling apart the seams of every story ever written. Everything relied on discourse, everything started at the purpose, the words on the page didn’t matter, it depended on the person who was reading them. Everytime I open a book, outside forces are affecting the story I stumbleupon. It reminds me of those children’s books the ones with alternate endings, where the reader decides where they want the story to go. “Flip to page 3, if Ernie finds the magic box, page 6, if Ernie finds a clue, for adventure.” Everything depends on what we want the story to be, the words and events are just guidelines. When asked the genre of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I had always answered with a cut and dry, cement response, memoir. I was taught genre was a word, not an idea. I had been stuck in a cement mind set. That everything could be answered in one small sentence. But genre is just another set of controlling values, and infinite amount of possibilities. Genre all depends on essentially what you are reading the book for. Genre can be ever changing, changing everytime we reread.

Every time I find myself reading a memoir, I find myself searching for similar memories in my own past. I discovered new “details”, I never thought to look for before. I say “details” in quotation marks because these details are not necessarily true. We place into our past what we want to remember. Our whole lives one big projected genre. Searching for missing pieces to fit the image we created of ourselves.

While reading, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I found myself searching for my own deep and traumatic memories, while reading through Angelou’s. In the beginning of the novel Angelou discusses her own self hatred childhood experiences, which unbeknowingly uncovered my own. On page 4, of the prologue, after explaining specific details about herself Angelou has grown to hate, Angelou states,

“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is unnecessary insult.”

This specific chapter brought me back to a time where I felt misplaced. A time where I felt different, and misunderstood. A time I don’t quite like to remember. There was a moment in my life where I felt just like Angelou, the big, ugly, black girl, with all the wrong features. This immediate projection caused me to create a genre of my own. A genre of my own life, to fit with the genre of the story. Two misplaced “black girls”, finding themselves.

I have found myself heading down the projection tunnel yet again. The genre of a story is always going to be someone else’s projection of what the story is about. Whether its is the authors projection or the readers. Memoirs specifically become the genre that mimics the author’s life an image that they created of themselves. The readers then twist this idea to fit better with there own self image. Isn’t that what I have been doing this whole time?

Controlling values are projections, genres are projections. What aspects of a book aren’t projections? Mini explosions keep bursting in my mind as I continue my narrative, finding answers to questions, I didn’t realize I was asking. Earning my shield I continued to discover detail after detail, reaching my own conclusions. I continued to read and reread, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, searching for a pattern, any sign of repetition, searching for more codes and secrets to uncover. But I had an important task, I had to keep in mind all that I had just previously learned. The text isn’t concrete, and I can’t see every thought and idea as concrete, there is always room for interpretation. Peter Rabinowitz noted this in, “Truth in Fiction: Reexamining Images,”

“we can treat the work neither as what it is nor what it appears to be; we must be aware simultaneously of both aspects” (125)

The number one thing you must learn before beginning the usage of these methods is this idea of being stuck in this constant grey area. There is the text, and then there is projections, we need to find peace in the middle of these two extremes.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, itself is stuck in the middle, battling between two extremes. The second time I picked up I Know why the Caged Bird Sings I tried to eliminate myself from the equation. Attempt to focus on what was there without me in it. Instead of finding connections within my own life, I found myself connecting the novel to the events occurring in today’s society. Throughout the novel I was able to find specific instances of oppression, correlating with events that still occur today. Events that have been reoccuring throughout history, refocusing on this idea of history repeating itself. The oppression of minorities, more specifically African Americans has become an American Cultural Code, the norm. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings explores this specific cultural codes history, unraveling a sinister picture.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is a blast from the past. Taking us back to a time, when slavery ended, and segregation was at its peak. An African American man had everything to fear back then, they were oppressed and represented poorly, there was no trial for a Black man, only error. Angelou paints this picture perfectly in chapter two of her novel. Angelou discusses how an African American man was being accused of a crime against a White young women. The Klu Klux Klan was doing a lynching raid throughout towns, lynching any black men they could find. Angelou and her family were forced to hide her Uncle Willie, in fear that he would be hanged. Angelou documents her distaste for these chain of events, on page eighteen,

“His confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan’s coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear.”

The system set inplace back then was unfair. Blacks were seen as inferior, even after the abolition of slavery. Some would argue that this unfair treatment died with the past. But there are plenty of instances and cases that prove this is not the case, even in today’s society. According to federal prison statistics, one in every three African American men spend their lives in jail. One third of the African American male population spend their lives behind bars. Still being persecuted, and racially profiled even in today’s society. The cultural code is still present, yet some choose to ignore the uncomfortable. Just like some people choose to ignore the past, oppressing the ugly, the opposing controlling value resurfacing.

But this is only something I think I found within the text. I mentioned how the second time I reread the novel I tired eliminating myself out of the equation. Trying to find meaning from what was there, without my own mind interfering. But like Rabinowitz mentioned, we need to become aware that even when we try, it’s still there. Being an immigrant and a minority myself (one of the oppressed), one can assume this cultural code, may be just another one of my projections.

I have been mentioning projections more than I thought I would throughout this narrative. But projections are the foundation of all aspects of a story. In order to tell a story we must project an idea onto another idea. We must first project our own purpose, then let everything else fall neatly into place. An author’s intended purpose for their own story, is in reality just there own projection. There intended purpose, and story itself changes depending on the reader. Yes the author might have an intended audience, to help guide their own purpose, but in reality it is mostly all based on assumptions. Rabinowitz explains this relationship between narrator and addressee,

“the author of the novel designs his work rhetorically for a specific hypothetical audience. Like a philosopher, historian, or journalist, he cannot write without making certain assumptions about his readers’s beliefs, knowledge, and familiarity with conventions. His artistic choices are based upon these assumptions, conscious or unconscious, and to a certain extent, his artistic success will depend on their accuracy” (126)

The author himself doesn’t know how his reader is going to react to the text. If they are going to find exactly what the author intended for them to find. It is nearly impossible to predict all of that. Angelou herself is an author trying to pass on her own idea of purpose through her novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Each memory she takes us on is setup to help us find her light at the end of the tunnel. Taking into consideration that this novel was a memoir, I blindly followed, a good little adresse, believing all her statements were fact. But after establishing the set of controlling values, and the inevitability of projections, I began to see Angelou as an unreliable narrator.

I discussed in the beginning of this narrative, when discussing the set of controlling values, that we place what we want onto our past. We create this self image of ourselves, and fix our past to mean and correlate with that self image. Angelou has her own projection of herself and the type of women she believed herself to be. What if her whole memoir is just a projection of her past to fit that self image that she created. This correlates with Culler’s theory of discourse before story. Angelou had her mind set on a discourse, and created the story to follow, expecting her addresses to blindly follow. But this class has taught me to look further than that. To not simply see what is there, but to examine what is there. There is so much hidden within a story to just read once and put down.

We all have our own stories are own genres we are forming every day as we step on this rollercoaster we call life. You can either let the roller coaster move you, or move the roller coaster. Deciphering I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, taught me to move the roller coaster.