Chapter 3 SEARCH FOR SELF

Chapter III The Portrayal of ‘Self’ in I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of the five volumes of Maya Angelou’s autobiography. It covers the years during the early 1930’s. Out of the five autobiographies, it is probably the most popular and critically acclaimed volume. The work deals with Angelou’s childhood and the period up to the age of sixteen. All the five volumes centre around the themes of family, self-discovery and motherhood. In terms of writing style and plot each of them is different. Maya’s mother, Vivian Baxter, and her son Guy, who is born at the end of this novel; are the central figures throughout Angelou’s story. As an autobiography the novel adheres to many conventions of the particular genre. It features the first person narration. Everything, in this novel, is looked through the author’s perspective. And the whole novel revolves around, Maya, who is the author herself. Thus the reader can have a glimpse of the American society and the social milieu through the author’s eyes. Since the story is being told by an adult the author resorts to a child-like voice and point of view for the novel. The author is successful in creating the ambience of her tender age. She has dug out her experiences from the deeper strata of her heart and adds a little of fictitious elements to it. It is always difficult to remember such minute details of one’s childhood at a later age but Angelou does a wonderful job. Angelou is at her sublime best in depicting such minute, sometimes even trivial, details of her childhood. For instance, she writes, “When Bailey was six and I a year younger, we used to rattle off the times tables with the speed I was later to see Chinese children in San Francisco employ on their abacuses” (10). This is a trivial description of an instance during her childhood days. But these tiny details present the author as a keen observer and a recorder of life. Another criterion, which affirms the work to be called an autobiography, is its chronological narration. The plot is well constructed and the narration conforms to the chronological and linear dimension. The novel begins right from her childhood and spans the period up to the age of sixteen. The starting lines of the novel are: “When I was three and bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed – ‘To whom it may concern’ – that we were Marguerite and bailey Johnson Jr. From long beach, California, enroute to Stamps Arkansas, C\o Mrs. Annie Henderson” (5) Here, Maya and her brother are taken to their grandmother by their divorced parents. As the novel proceeds one could see the growth physically and mentally. The first few chapters depict the child in Maya. Then one could see the mature and refined Maya. Thus a transition occurs in her character .she writes “When I refused to be the child they knew and accept me to be, I was called impudent and my muteness sullenness” (88). Here, one could see a mature face of her. The bitter experiences in her life force to wear the mask of maturity. The chronological narration helps the readers to find the character formation of the protagonist. In the beginning, Maya has an inferiority complex, that she is darker when compared to her brother. As she writes, “The age faded colour made my skin look dirty like mud, and everyone in church was looking at my skinny legs” (2). But gradually she digests the fact. This is a clear example of her character formation. The plot is well constructed and it follows the chronological aspect, which is typical of autobiographies. The story starts with Maya and her brother’s stay at Arkansas. She puts “We lived with our grandmother and Uncle in the rear of the store (it always spoken of with a Capital S) which she had owned some twenty five years (6). Later they are taken to their mother in California. There she experiences plenty of pain and sufferings and is even molested by her mother’s boyfriend. This incident brings about a lot of changes in her life. It makes her grow into maturity. But there is no end to the unhappy spells in her life .They keep recurring in her life. Till end of the story, one could see Maya suffers with very little time to happy. Thus the chronological narration helps the readers to have a glimpse of the course of her life story and the development of her character. Maya Angelou represents the Africa American Society, the African Americans did not have a proper living condition during 1930s and they had to brave many odds. She writes, “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” (9).This is the ground reality, which shows how they suffered to earn even the daily bread. Racism was rampant and being a black woman Maya had to suffer in two ways. First of all she had to defend herself against racism, and secondly being a woman, she had to suffer a lot in the society. So it was an extreme adversary condition that was prevailing then. ‘She’ had to do all the works in the fields and at the same time had to take care of all domestic chores. The black women were totally engaged moreover she had to yield to the demands of not only the black men but also the white men. This was the grim reality of the black women of those days. The theme of racism is very much reflected in Angelou’s most writings. This novel is not an exception; the major themes that are developed in the novel are racism and sexism. Born at a crucial time in American history, young Maya must struggle for acceptance both as a block person and as a woman .Fortunately for her; she has the determination to see both struggles through to the end. At a young age, Maya internalizes the idea that blonde hair and blue eyes are the Yardsticks for the beauty and this makes her depressed because she lacks both. As she gets older, she is confronted by more overt and personal racist abuses such as the white speaker’s condescending address at her eighth grade graduation, her white boss’s insistence on calling her Mary and a white dentist’s refusal to treat her. The importance Of Joe Louis’ World Championship boxing match to the black community reveals the dearth publicity of recognized African American heroes .It also demonstrates the desperate nature of the black community’ s hope for vindication through the athletic triumph of one man she writes, “The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren’t even in on it) would try to be Jesse Oweneses and Joe Louises”(179).Sports is the only arena in which the black can outplay the white. Maya gets irritated by this fact. Thus she comes to learn the pressures of living in thoroughly racist society, which has profoundly shaped the character of her family members. Maya is shuttled around to seven different homes between the ages of three and sixteen. Her personal displacement echoes the large societal forces that displaced blacks all across the country. Like Maya, thousands of other terrified black children made the same journey. She writes “years later I discovered that the United States had been crossed thousands of times by frightened Black Children travelling alone to their newly affluent parents in Northern Cities, or back to grandmothers in Southern towns when the Urban North renewed on its economic promises” (6). The African Americans were deported from their homes and homelands in Africa, and following the Emancipation proclamation in a country still hostile to their heritage. This ground reality is well portrayed in this work. Thus Angelou is successful is portraying her times. The novel gives a lively description of her childhood days and the early phase of her teenage life .This particular novel is considered to be the best among her four other autobiographies. It gives an eventful story of a young girl, Maya even at her tender age, she suffered a lot and gradually her mind was conditioned to the environment, where she lived on .It was not a bed of roses for her but a rocky path to be travelled. Even at that age she has tasted the bitterness of racism, sexism, segregation and abandonment. All these experiences have made a deep impact on her character .It is during the childhood that the character of a person is formed. She starts cultivating a habit of reading good books in literature and as she mentions, her first love was William Shakespeare. Throughout, her life, literature plays a significant role in bolstering her confidence and providing a world of fantasy and escape. She channelized all her energy in Reading books. Books were one of the good consolations in her unhappy life. All these tiny and even trivial, elements have had a larger effect in the author`s life. Those played a vital role in the author`s life. Thus she never hesitates to give those tiny details in the novel. All these helped her to achieve the zenith of popularity. Moreover, she was being moulded as a strong black woman. According to her the towering character of the black American women should be seen as the predictable outcome of a hard-fought struggle. Many black women fall along the way. The ones who can weather the storm of racism and sexism obviously will shine with greatness. They have survived, and therefore by definition are survivors. The novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is a sublime piece of art which is studied with some touching reflections of the author’s own life. Angelou has reconstructed her personal history in this autobiographical tale whose protagonist is the child narrator, Maya. In reality, she becomes the collective consciousness off Angelo’s past life. The salient feature of this particular novel is its detailed description of each and every aspect of the author`s childhood. It is a difficult task to recollect all such minute details which happened long years back. But here, she presents in a detailed fashion to get the feel of childhood, which is being described in the novel .The novel narrates the early years of the author’s life, thus she has purposefully made the language “childish” and a bit “immature” As she writes,” 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 made men look less manly, less threatening a little more like women”(21). Usually autobiographies are characterized by their plain, coarse and sometimes prosaic style of presenting things. But this novel completely keeps away from that aspect of the genre. Sometimes readers might even misconstrue such autobiographies as mere prose pieces. Unlike the other autobiographies, this one has dialogues, which bring liveliness while reading. Such candid dialogues help in avoiding the monotony of telling things straight and plain. This style will help the readers to digest the ideas easily. Such dialogues might even help the readers to draw situations in their minds. The language used in the novel is simple and at the same time striking. Angelou has chosen the right words all along the novel. The style is very lucid and has a magnetic effect on the readers. She writes, “The Last inch of the space was filled, yet people continued to wedge themselves along the walls of the store. Uncle Willie has turned the radio up to its last notch so that youngsters on the porch wouldn’t miss a world” (133). She selects common laymen’s language rather than scholarly terms. She never tries to treat the work as a vehicle to showcase her literary skills. There lies the success of the writer who keeps her work at a level, which is reachable to even an average person. She never beats around the bush; instead presents everything in a clear and straight – forward fashion. The narration of her being molested by mother’s boyfriend is a typical example of this kind. Everything is said in a direct way and nothing is hidden. As she writes, “I thought I had died – I work up in a while – walled world, and it had to be heaven. But Mr. Freeman was there and he was washing me” (78). The narrative technique is very much linear. The plot develops gradually and everything is arranged chronologically. The conversations are told in typical black American Slang. She writes, “They stood around like cut out cardboard figures and asked ‘well, how is it up North?’ ‘see any of them big buildings?’ ‘Ever ride one of them elevators?’ ‘Was you scared?’ “While folks any different, like they say?” (90) With her literary skills, Angelou draws pictures. The novel has a picturesque quality. The author spills the colourful words on the canvass and it makes a marvellous picture. White going through the paragraphs, the reader could see the pictures, which last in their mind for a pretty long time. The portrayal of her days at the hospital after giving birth to a baby is a quintessential piece, which has superb picturesque quality. She writes, “I begged in vain. I was sure to roll over and crush out his life or break those fragile bones. She wouldn’t hear of it, and within minutes the pretty golden baby was lying on back in the centre of my bed, laughing at me” (289). Her words help the readers to draw pictures in their own mind. Those paragraphs enable the readers to see a girl, who is around sixteen, giving birth to a child. She is completely ignorant of everything around her and looks at the baby with complete fancy. She is even afraid to touch him. Her frank narrative of all such instances makes the story candid. She never tries to conceal anything. Instead she tells everything openly like a child. Her portrayal of her bitter experience with Mr. Freeman and her unromantic affair with her neighbour are typical examples of her frankness. The novel also has dimensions of the picaresque quality. Usually the picaresque novel describes the adventures of a person. Angelou swims against the society and her strong mind helps her to exist in the world. She is a true “hero” who braves the odds. There are so many instances to prove that this novel a picaresque. Once she drives fifty miles in a car even without knowing driving properly, then spends hardly a month in a junkyard with some runways, and later she becomes first black streetcar conductor in san Francisco. All this incidents expose the “hero” in Maya Angelou. Since the book spans many years of Angelou’s life in several different locations, it is almost a picaresque tale that is not tightly unified by time and place. Angelou acts as the one and only key character, and all the other character revolve around her. Angelou acts as the key unifying factor to hold the novel together. It is the very quality of autobiographies. The presence f Angelou is preserved throughout the novel and all others come across as sub-ordinates. Another key element in the text is the mood, which is preserved in the novel, is both tense and nostalgic. As she looks at her past, the narrator is sometimes frightened, sometimes sad. She peppers her narration with adult commentary on the tragedy of being a confused child. Within the book, there is an entire range of emotions from anger to rage to irony and hysteria.Inspite of the pain she endures, Maya as the narrator, is usually upbeat, energetic and self –evaluating. “There where choices on the shelves that could set a hungry child’s mouth to watering, Green beans, shaped always the right length, collards, cabbage, juicy red tomato preserves that came into their own on steaming buttered biscuits, and sausage,beets,berries and every fruit grown in Arkansas”(24).She describes all these as if the tastes were still there in her tongue. The novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is not only the autobiography of Maya Angelou but is the history of U.S.A in the early decades of the twentieth century. Readers could picturize the history through the author’s perspective. One could see Maya as an example taken from the 1930’s U.S.history.She is fit to be called the flag bearer of the African American womanhood. The evils in the society, which were prevailing then, are portrayed in a fine fashion. The vital themes of the novel are racism and sexism. The protagonist herself has to undergo the painful spells of the both. She is a victim, who experiences some terrible incidents at her tender age. Thus with the help of this particular Novel one could have glance at the life of the African Americans in the 1930s. Angelou tries to tell her story in the form of a novel, which helps her to have a room for her own creativity. Usually autobiographies are written in a straightforward way, which will be full of facts. But here, the author is able to add some fictitious elements to it. But this has a drawback too. Such presentation makes the readers hesitate in believing the whole life story. They may wonder whether to believe it or not. By introducing herself as a character in the novel, Angelou could get away from criticism. She has got the chance to keep Maya as a mere character and can face the aces of criticism. It will make a lesser impact on the readers because they might even consider Maya only as a character. The portrayal of her sexual relation with Mr. Freeman and her neighbour crosses the limit of morality. It might have a negative impact on the readers. She could argue that reality is portrayed as it is, but it is her duty to consider the impact of such explicit presentations on the readers. The reader may even reach the state of nausea while reading such descriptions. It is the duty of the critic to evaluate a piece of art with an unbiased mind. It is necessary that a reader or critic should consider the elements of a work of art positively and realistically. Thus I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is definitely a great piece of literature. PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 30