160 Maya Angelou
there is a secret something that is striving to grow. It
is the thing I let be killed in myself.”
On rare occasions, the individual can succeed in
reaching out and having a dialogue with someone
else. George’s mother succeeds in communicating
not with her husband but with Dr. Reefy, and he
with her, during conversations. However, not only is
this release temporary, but even Elizabeth’s doctor
friend “did not listen” to her. Another instance of
achieved communication occurs between two male
friends; the one who is married and having difficulty
feeding his family tries to warn the other against
married life. The married one momentarily feels a
blaze of kinship with nature. So, too, George sees the
residents of Winesburg “must be brothers and sisters
to him”—but only temporarily. When he succeeds in
taking a walk with Helen White, the girl for whom
he has the most feeling, atoms are a metaphor for
the separateness of the individual characters; they
cling together for a short time, but then go their
separate ways.
In addition to being main protagonist, George
Willard is also associated with the different aspects
of local society: the newspaper that seeks to men-
tion as many residents in each edition as possible;
the New Willard House, his parent’s shabby hotel,
in which many characters stay; Winesburg; and the
judgments passed by Winesburg’s residents.
Individuals possessed by an idea are grotesque,
as are all the residents in Winesburg. The book
begins with a procession of grotesques in a section
titled “The Book of the Grotesque.” This section
is the frame story that gives rise to the rest of the
stories. Winesburg, Ohio, is a short-story cycle.
Each chapter can stand alone and has the features
of a short story such as epiphany and one main
character; on the other hand, the chapters are
related by means of links and repeated characters
and situations. Thus, the genre of Winesburg, Ohio,
is itself a model of individual (story) and society
(whole work). Both the most prominent individual
(George Willard) and the most prominent descrip-
tor of society (grotesques) function as links to tie
the book together.
Natalie Tarenko
MAYA ANGELOU I Know Why the
Caged Bird Sings (1970)
In Maya Angelou’s autobiographical story I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings, we follow the protago-
nist, Marguerite (whom her brother calls Maya),
from the age of three until the birth of her son. The
story starts when Maya and her brother Bailey are
sent away to live with their paternal grandmother,
Momma, and their crippled uncle, Willie. The
siblings spend their early years helping out in their
grandmother’s store, which is the heart of the poor
black southern town in which she lives. Eventually
they are sent back to their mother, who, they dis-
cover, is a striking beauty.
The story provides detailed descriptions of what
it was like for a black girl to grow up in a deeply
racist society. The story conveys Maya’s sense of
displacement and illustrates how she experiences her
supposed ugliness—in comparison to her mother
and brother—to be visible proof of her outsider
status. Maya’s father, Daddy Bailey, appears on the
outskirts of the story, but the big influences on
her life are, according to her, her two mothers; her
beloved brother; Mrs. Flowers, a sophisticated black
friend of her grandmother’s, who draws her out of
her self-inflicted muteness through the recitation of
poems; and Miss Kerwin, a teacher who is particu-
larly impartial in matters of race.
Although indignation over injustices and harsh
descriptions of a bleak and painful reality are
inevitable parts of Maya’s story, it is also a tale about
the possibility of keeping one’s dignity in the face
of insults and of overcoming injustices through
perseverance.
Eva LupinabandOnment in I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings
Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel opens with
three-year-old Maya and her four-year-old bother
Bailey traveling alone across the United States wear-
ing wrist tags that read “To Whom It May Con-
cern.” The siblings are being sent away from their
newly divorced parents to live with their paternal
grandmother, and Maya reacts by pretending her
parents are dead. “I couldn’t believe that our mother
would laugh and eat oranges in the sunshine without