I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Research Paper

Raeva Sikka

Ms. Drosdick

Honors English, period 9

February 9th, 2018 When Maya i s eight years old, she is raped by her mother’s boyfriend which causes her to stop speaking for five years. Later on, she finds the courage and strength to write her story, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. The book, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, a true story by Maya Angelou shows an apparent theme of racism and segregation. The main character, a young girl, Maya is constantly watching how white people are being treating better and much more fairly than the black people. She also notices how she, along with everyone else in the community, is unable to do anything about the unjust laws that were taking place. The white people were living the life while the

The problem was that there was no negro dentist in Stamps and the closest one was 25 miles away. Maya’s grandmother said that the white dentist in Stamps owed her a favor from the Depression so she took Maya there. When they got there they were harshly greeted by a white lady at the front counter. She looked at them in a surprised and disgusted way. Maya says, “It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness (Angelou 187).” This was mostly unfair because there shouldn't have been a “burden of Blackness”. The fact that something like that exists is unjust and very unfair. There shouldn’t be a burden of being born a certain way or having a skin color. No one can change the way they look and no one should have to just so that they can fit in. It is an atrocity that there was a burden on Maya and her community for being a dark skin color and not being white. Going on, once Dr. Lincoln finally came out and met Maya and her grandmother he turned them down. He told them that he doesn’t treat negros and that it was against his “policy”. He was so harsh and the worst and most hurtful thing that he said was, “Annie, my policy is I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger’s (Angelou 189).” This shows how poorly black people were treated. Using the word nigger is outrageously insulting and more than that, saying that he would rather treat an animal than a black person is the rudest and most disturbing sentence that someone could ever say. There are no words to describe how awfully rude and racist that is. The doctor didn’t even think about what he was saying but also at that time period saying something like that was normal because that is actually what white people thought about black people. This is an example of theme being portrayed through