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The Things They Carried By Maya Angelou Analysis

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Emotional Burdens in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and The Things They Carried Over the course of your life, you will most likely experience an abundance of emotional burdens that can either make or destroy you, which begs the question: How much of an emotion strain can a single person handle before breaking? In Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya is faced with the emotional burden of being a young black woman in a time where racism was an issue across America. As she grows, she tells the story of her struggle to become an independent woman when all odds are against her otherwise. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Tim describes his time as a soldier in Vietnam in the late 1960s where the only thing scarier than the threat of death was the burdens they would carry on their shoulders for the rest of their lives. In Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird …show more content…

Both authors not only painted descript images of their troubles, but summarize their experiences in ways that leave the reader feeling heartbroken for the struggles they’d went through. Not only did both characters come out of their experiences stronger than ever, but neither of them broke within the stories they told. They both fought past their burdens and found ways to cope. I find that to be the most courageous thing out of both experiences - not the war, not the struggle of being black in a racist country, but their coping mechanisms. With what I’ve learned about the struggles of both Maya Angelou and Tim O’Brien, I’ve learned that as long as I still have the will to fight against my burdens, I will come out alive and hopeful. In a situation where it’s either your life or living with the painful emotional burdens and trauma of your past experiences, what would you choose? Would you be strong enough to

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III. a. Maya Angelou was an avid writer, speaker, activist and teacher. As a result of the many hardships that she suffered while growing up as a poor black woman in the south she has used her own experiences as the subject matter of her written work. In doing this she effectively shows how she was able to overcome her personal obstacles. Her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) tells the story of her life and how she overcame and moved forward triumphantly in spite of her circumstances.

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Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, Can't Do is like Don’t Care. Neither of them have a home'" (Angelou 265). Maya’s mother impacts her life greatly, allowing the developing mindset of the cruelty of racism.

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