Caged Bird Analysis

Caged Bird Analysis We see couple of themes in this extract, the most important ones are the Racism and Maya’s insecurity, as we see it in this extract it is also comes throughout the book itself, it is the main themes the book is based on. The opening of the racism theme is on the line 13, Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, it represent that the society was strictly divided in racial groups and also shows that the religion is a quite an important factor in the live of our main character, Maya. Line 20, opens a first character after the writer, Momma, a person who was looking after Maya. The way Momma was mentioned right in the beginning and the way she is presented to us “As I’d watched Momma”, I can interpret that Momma plays a big role in Maya’s live as she was mentioned first and also we were told that she watches her, meaning Momma is Maya’s role model of a woman she should be once she a grown up, and we do see this throughout the book later on. Straight from the beginning Maya is trying to show us what kind of person she was, which we are able to see in lines 23 to 31 one. “I was going to look like one of the sweet white girls who were everybody’s dream…” this shows us that Maya was very insecure in herself and also it shows lam of self-esteem. Maya wasn’t happy about being who she was, specially her race. This can represent that those times black people weren’t accepted as normal people or people who could be on the same level of evolution as white people. That white people were superior in everything starting with beauty. The supervisory can be seen in the line 29, when Maya dreams to be a white girl and she finally becomes one (she always thought she was white inside) everyone would start to apologize to her and as a white, superior person she will forgive them. This passage is written with an adult point of view looking back at her past. It could be interpreted as she uses past tense and analyses the things in more mature way.