Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sing Sings - Setting as the Portrayal of Self-Realization - Research Paper Example

The Number 29 May The Use of Setting in Angelou's “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sing Sings” as the Portrayal of Self-Realization Achievement as an African-American Woman In psychology, person’s character in adulthood is believed to be largely influenced by the effect of growing up in particular surroundings. Indeed, what a person experiences as a child later shapes the personality, moral principles, and beliefs. Just as the setting (when and where one grows up) molds a person into what he/she finally becomes, the protagonist of the autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” experiences her coming of age inseparably from the settings’ influence. The story starts in Stamps, Arkansas. Later Maya will experience living in St. Louis, Missouri, also Oakland, California, and San Francisco, California (Angelou). Just as Maya moves from place to place, her identity as a black woman grows stronger. She comes to achieving self-realization through self-empowerment, and from a black girl with inferiority complex she turns into a confident young woman that is able to resist racial prejudice. My goal in this paper is to analyze how Maya achieves self-realization while she is moving from Stamps to St.Louis and to California. Specifically, I will discuss how, in each of these cities, Maya grows to develop a sense of what it really means to be black. She learns to stand for this. Let us start the discussion of Maya transformation from the time she lived in Stamps, Arkansas. Those were Maya’s early years. Following the plot of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, Stamps in Arkansas in the 1930s is a typical town in deep American South, where racism and segregation are thriving (Angelou 24-25). According to the deep-seated racist beliefs, African American people deserve being made to wear indignities on a daily basis. To make the matters worse, lynch mobs are common in the society. Maya and her older brother Bailey live with their father’s mother Annie or Momma, who owns a store in Stamps. This store is the only one in the black area of Stamps, so Momma for Maya is a person whom she respects and admires in some way. Maya dreads the horrible conditions which black people are placed in. Every time she watches them going to the field where they pick cotton, Maya realizes this plight. Black people are confined to the status of poor laborers. These cotton-pickers and servants, due to racism, do not have opportunities for advancement, including education. In segregated Stamps, all power be it economic, cultural or political belongs to dominating whites. To illustrate: “In Stamps, the segregation was so complete that most black children didn’t really, absolutely know what whites looked like. Other than that they were different , to be dreaded and in that dread was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well-dressed” (Angelou 24-25). Further, the segregation Maya and Bailey encounter in Stamps is evidently based on violence. If one wants to violate the belittling Jim Crow laws, this person will be immediately punished. Both symbolically and realistically, lynching pervades the narrative. Ku Klux Klan is at its peak and white hatred permeates the attitude to the black community. The latter does not even attempt to question the imposed ideology. African Americans in the narrative take their low social status for granted and accept their state of being subjected. Interestingly, they are unable to relate their plight to historical reality, which seemingly could have helped them form a different opinion. For example, Momma unconvincingly explains the roots of white people’s position towards blacks when she wants to clarify the essence of the lynching episode to Bailey: “Momma added that some people said that whitefolks had come over to Africa (she made it sound like a hidden valley on the moon) and stole the colored people and made them slaves, but nobody really believed it was true” (Angelou 191). In this segregated society, whiteness is perceived as a cultural norm for Blacks against which they either implicitly or explicitly measure themselves (Baisnee, 1997, p. 75). Specifically, from the opening chapter it is clear that white are a criterion of attractiveness and beauty. In particular, in the first chapter Maya is described dreaming about turning into a white girl with blond hair and blue eyes (Angelou 4-5). It is clear that Maya suffers from realizing she is a black child and will forever remain not so refined and gracious as white girls. One more example of black people’s admiring white norms is Bailey’s watching a movie star who is white. Just as the boy is missing his mother, he finds this supportive (Angelou 114-115). Besides, when Maya describes Mrs Flowers, her positive characteristics are again related to white norm: she acts in a way “as refined as the whitefolks in the movies” (Angelou 92). Thomas in her essay “Exuberance as Beauty: The Prose and Poetry of Maya Angelou” describes Angelou’s opposition to her African American identity as social displacement (Thomas 52). Thomas goes on to further explain that Maya rejects the defining characteristics of the black community in Stamps, such as cuisine or slang rather than settling into the way of life of the black society which seems to be inherent to her. To Maya, the reality is white, but what she feels she is surrounded with is “a black ugly dream” (Angelou 4). Maya feels socially displaced just as she cannot find happiness in the fact that she is black and not white. This inner opposition penetrates the whole narrative starting in the opening chapter, when Maya fails to recite a poem in from of the black congregation on Easter in church. The fact that she is black and not white seems to cause almost physical suffering when Maya realizes she was born with the skin of wring color. This feeling is exacerbated with being given a white doll with blue eyes by her mother. The doll symbolizes to the heroine what was beautiful and right in the world she lived. Given this, people Maya admires are those representatives of black community that have gained some independence from the community of whites. The girl admires them on the basis of their resemblance of white people and taking on features of the white community members. For instance, Maya’s granny Momma is the only black female that has ever been addressed as “Mrs” by a white man. Maya feels admiration towards Momma because of her ability to gain respect among the whites. Next, Maya admires Bertha Flower for her ability to act in a courteous manner which Maya didn’t think black people could do. To illustrate, Maya writes, “She acted just as refined as whitefolks in the movies and books and she was more beautiful” (Angelou 92). Bertha Flower’s mastery of literature and language help Maya realize people are not confined to the color of skin if education and good manners are to be achieved. All in all, Maya’s experience in Stamps is that of rejecting her identity as a black person and her belonging to the oppressed black community. While at this stage Maya’s heroine evidently does not reach any degree of self-realization, the power of her opposition to the status of a black person will prove helpful for later self-empowerment in her life. It will be especially helpful for Maya’s development of the desire to reach certain goals beyond the daily routine of black community and beyond the socially imposed limits of personal advancement. Besides, Maya’s encounter with Bertha Flowers will set the basis of her later acceptance of the black identity as equal to that of white people thanks to Bertha’s manners and level of development (Angelou 98). The experience in St Louis is the time when Maya realizes black women can be strong and can realize themselves in this life. The narrative tells how the girl and her brother are taken to St Louis when Maya turns eight. At one point in the story, Maya’s father appears and takes children to St Louis where they will stay with their mother Vivian (Angelou 59). It needs to be mentioned that being raised without parents, who divorced and lived separately, Maya and her brother feel unwanted. Throughout the narrative they are portrayed as making efforts to put up with being abandoned by their father and mother. Together with the feeling of being inferior to the white people, this feeling haunts Maya. However, in St Louis she sees examples of black women who are strong enough to stand up for themselves. These black women are able to advance not only within the black people community, but the white population of St Louis. For instance, Maya sees her mother Vivian Baxter as such strong woman. Being practical and having a strong character, Vivian opts for working in gambling parlors in order to fill her life with financial independence. So she does not work as a nurse though trained to. In her turn, her mother and Maya’s and Bailey’s granny is a respected and authoritative member of the St Louis black community – in a city where “prohibition, gambling and their related vocations were so obviously practiced” (Angelou 51). St Louis experience is also notable in terms of Maya’s realizing herself a victim, which will later help her to be a rebel. Social victimization is greatly exacerbated by a rape. Mr Freeman, Maya’s stepfather rapes her after molesting the girl first. He is convicted and murdered apparently by one of Maya’s uncles. Here, in St Louis, it seems, Maya’s desire to gain power and realize herself awakens first. Maya’s realizes that one should not have fear if she or he wants to achieve some power in life. This period of her life may be called as transitional in her coming to realize herself as someone worth respect, praise and equal status. Besides, experience in St Louis is the one of absorbing the features of May’s role models, grandmother Baxter above all. These are the models of black women who are strong and smart and have power. It seems only in California where Maya and Bailey come to live when the girl turns thirteen she reaches the level of acceptance of her black identity. It is in San Francisco that Maya places herself in opposition to the white community and this helps her find her black identity. After spending a summer with her father Big Bailey and after a conflict with his hostile partner Dolores, Maya finds herself living with a group of homeless young people for a month, who live in the junkyard. This helps her to grow strong and makes her self-confident. Also, Maya’s experience with her father and his girlfriend helps her define the true black identity – the one which is based on self-respect rather than copying the reality of the white world. Specifically, she perceives her father’s social role in a rather critical way seeing how he explicitly rejects his identity as an African American man. First of all, it is his English pronunciation and specific social poses that show how alienated he is from existing conditions of his life. He presents himself as if he were affluent and authoritative, but in reality he is an ordinary black men serving the needs of white people. To illustrate: “His voice rang like a metal dipper hitting a bucket and he spoke English. Proper English, like the school principal, and even better. Our father sprinkled errs and errers in his sentences as liberally as he gave out his twisted-mouth smiles” (Angelou 53) It may seem funny but Maya’s father appears to deliberately ignore his racial difference in a society which is segregated by law. While Big Bailey and his girlfriend make every effort to be associated with white people of middle class, their economic status is still inferior – that of African Americans in that time. Maya writes: “He worked in the kitchen of a naval hospital and they both said he was a medical dietician for the United States Navy” (Angelou 222). Maya evidently realizes the wrong way to deal with Blackness in her father’s example. Just as Bailey Johnson strives to be a part of the white-dominated society, he finds a place within the system. His partner Dolores does the same thing. She imitates the urban lifestyle of white bourgeoisie despite the fact that has no material background for this. For example, “When I first met Dolores she had all the poses of the Black bourgeoisie without the material basis to support the postures” (Angelou 221). Contrasting Dolores with her mother Vivian Baxter, Maya is able to develop her understanding of what a real woman should be. Dishonest and unfriendly Dolores who hits Maya in a fight provides the food for thought of what Maya would not like to be. This also helps her in realization of self. Having had such a terrible experience, Maya now feels strong enough to defy the existing policy of employment in San Francisco. She wants to be a streetcar conductor and starts fighting to get this position. Here one needs to mention that the no black people had been accepted for the position of a streetcar conductor before. Despite this fact, in order to reach self-realization Angelou embarks on getting the position. Just as Maya’s faces racism while trying to get the desired job, her already established values as a representative of the black community become evident. From the autobiography, one gets to know that Maya is not allowed to directly meet the head of all streetcar conductors when she wishes to apply for a job on the grounds of her black skin and gender. This situation is illustrative of the hardships the girl needs to overcome until she gets an equal opportunity with that of white people. The battle is really hard and Maya fights with pride and dignity. At the beginning, Maya’s intention seemed weird and devoid of any perspective, especially when we read the initial response of Vivian Baxter, Maya’s mother: “They don’t accept colored people on the streetcars” (Angelou 225). However, Maya’s determination appears to be stronger than the limits of racial status and eventually gets the job. Importantly, her mother helps Maya to realize herself by encouraging her to go on fighting for the desired position: “That’s what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you’ve got. I’ve told you may times, can’t do is like don’t care” (Angelou 225). Finally, here in California, Maya realizes herself to the fullest by accepting her early motherhood with dignity. She realizes her and her son’s value and hefts “the burden of pregnancy onto [her] own shoulders where it belonged” (Angelou 242). It seems giving a birth to a child in San Francisco and accepting is as a gift rather than curse is a final step of Maya’s realization as a woman and as a personality in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”. Hence, Maya’s personal and social transformation is related to geographic movement. She starts as a social outcast in Stamps and ends as a self-realized individual with an established identity and life values in San Francisco. Sufferings in Stamps are followed by a period of awakening in St Louis and the period of self-empowerment in California. Works Cited Angelou, Maya. I know why the caged bird sings. New York: Bantam Books, 1971. Print. Angelou, Maya. (1984) I know why the caged bird sings. London: Virago Press, 1984, Print. Baisnee, Valerie. Gendered Resistance: The Autobiographies of Simone de Beauvoir, Maya Angelou, Janet Frame and Marguerite Duras. Rodopi, 1997. Print. Thomas, Rachel. “Exuberance as Beauty: The Prose and Poetry of Maya Angelou”. In (Ed) Harold Bloom Maya Angelou. Infobase Publishing, 2002. Print. Read More