Rosa Parks A Caged Bird Analysis

During the time of segregation, a woman went to the Court Square to catch a bus to go home. In her autobiography, “from Rosa Parks: My Story”, Rosa Parks describes the the time when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was riding the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama when the incident occurred. Rosa Parks’ experience is most similar to both a free bird’s and a caged bird’s, because of the way she felt, acted, and viewed herself. The protagonist, Rosa Parks, felt like a caged bird when she sat in the Cleveland Avenue bus, because she was tired of letting the white people control her life, and the dark memories the bus driver brought back made her feel worse. The main character, Rosa Parks, gets on a bus and regrets it immediately after she discerns the bus driver. “It was the same driver who had put me off the bus back in 1943, twelve years earlier… I do know most of the time if I saw him on a bus, I wouldn’t get on it” (168). The protagonist remembered the bus driver and avoided him for more than a decade, because she felt violated and wanted to prevent the same event from happening again. The act made her feel caged, because it

The antagonist went outside to wait for the cops to arrive, while Rosa Parks sat inside thinking about the consequences. “I knew that anything was possible. I could be manhandled or beaten. I could be arrested” (169). Rosa Parks was fully aware of the outcome, but in her perspective, she was doing what was ethically correct. Her sudden and guileless act was what proved her as a free bird, because she knew he life was finally in her hands. Later on, the protagonist mentions that she did not think too intensely about her decisions. “In fact if I had let myself think too deeply about what might happen to me, I might have gotten off the bus. But I chose to remain”