I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 161her children,” she explains. When, one year, the sib-
lings suddenly receive Christmas presents from their
parents, it is a painful reminder that they have cho-
sen a life without their children, rather than a cause
for joy; and in a manner typical of children, Maya
feels guilty and wonders what she has done wrong.
The initial act of abandonment committed by
her parents affects Maya’s sense of belonging and
results in her not feeling at home anywhere. While
living with her grandmother, she does not mind
being taken for her uncle Willie’s child, since she
does not “feel any loyalty” to her father and sus-
pects she would have been better treated as Willie’s
daughter, anyway. And when it is decided that the
siblings are to live with their mother, after residing
for a time with their maternal grandparents, Maya’s
reaction shows how constant relocations give rise
to feelings of detachment: “Moving from the house
where the family was centered meant absolutely
nothing to me. It was simply a small pattern in the
grand design of our lives.” Never knowing how long
she is to stay in one particular house, Maya avoids
creating strong bonds with anyone but her brother.
Maya’s reflection that her mother “was compe-
tent in providing for us. Even if that meant get-
ting someone else to furnish the provisions” reveals
her desire for parental care; and this need makes
her especially vulnerable to the advances of Mr.
Freeman, the man living with her mother. After a
first incident of physical closeness with him, she
is reassured by his embrace and convinced that
he is her “real father”; and subsequently, Freeman
takes advantage of this closeness and rapes Maya.
Discovering what has happened to her daughter,
Maya’s mother has her boyfriend killed; the trau-
matic incident and her feelings of guilt cause Maya
to withdraw into complete silence. She refuses to
speak to anyone but Bailey, and when she feels them
growing apart, she retreats into the world of books,
reflecting that “the long-lost children mistaken for
waifs, became more real to me than our house, our
mother, our school or Mr. Freeman.”
A sense of loneliness, then, prevails in Maya’s
life, and she is constantly aware of the possibility of
abandonment. On a trip to New Mexico with her
father, upon losing sight of him, she finds herself in
a “fog of panic,” which, she says, “nearly suffocated
me.” She becomes convinced that he has sold her to
a man and left her; her anxiety is relieved only upon
finding his car parked in the yard. Back at home, she
has an argument with his girlfriend, which results
in a wound on her arm, and her father therefore
decides to leave her with friends. Waking up in an
empty house, Maya does not want to wait around
for anyone, and, afraid to show her mother her
arm, she spends a month on the street with a group
of other abandoned children, who, she says, “set a
tone of tolerance for my life.” Maya’s experience of
abandonment makes her sensitive to the other chil-
dren’s emotional limitations, and she is therefore not
surprised that her friends are “undemonstrative” and
receive the news with noticeable “detachment” when
she decides to leave them.
Although the theme of abandonment pervades
the novel, the story concludes on a note of hope. As
the story nears its end, Maya has just delivered her
firstborn and is persuaded by her mother to let the
baby sleep in her bed. Overcome by tiredness, she
falls asleep, only to be awakened by her mother, who
shows Maya that her baby lies fast asleep, touching
her side in the secure space of her folded arm. The
blanket covers him like a roof that completes the
symbolic home Maya creates for her baby with her
own body. In this way, convinced that Maya will not
repeat the abandonment she herself suffered, read-
ers are left confident of her little boy’s prospects of
growing up with his mother.
Eva Lupinidentity in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou’s autobiographical story depicts the
childhood and adolescence of Marguerite, or Maya,
a black girl growing up in a deeply racist society.
The novel opens with words that well illustrate
Maya’s existence and that also come to influence
her state of mind: “What you looking at me for?
I didn’t come to stay.. .” When she is three years
old, Maya’s parents decide to get divorced, and as a
result she and her four-year-old brother, Bailey, are
sent on a bus crossing several states to their paternal
grandmother in the South. The porter who has been
paid to accompany them deserts the children after a
day, and they are forced to take care of themselves.
This is the first time they are separated from their