Caged Bird And World's Reward Analysis

The two passages “Caged Bird,” and “World’s Reward,” both have the same positive theme, and are very rich with symbolism. The theme for them is about freedom, the spiritual and physical meaning of it. For symbolism the stories relate to the slaves and slave owners of the 1600-1800 centuries. The theme in “Caged Bird,” and “World’s Reward,” is spiritual freedom is possible even in the midst of physical enslavement. In the passages the authors, Maya Angelou and James A Haney, keep the theme positive by having the characters think of freedom as such a good thing. In “Caged Bird,” a bird is caged unable to have physical freedom, trapped with just it’s spiritual freedom. In “Caged Bird,” paragraph 2, it says, “But a bird stalks down his narrow cage…” This shows how the caged bird is trapped in his cage, unable to have physical freedom because of it. Though this bird doesn't have physical freedom it does not give …show more content…
The passages use this symbolism to develop the theme and show that the main characters are not just animals but have feelings like humans. The symbolic reference used in the passages refers to the time of slavery. In “Caged Bird” is showing a bird being caged wishing for freedom which is a salve, or black. Also the free bird in the passage is a white, or a slave owner. The free bird, or white shows of it’s freedom and soars in the open sky, but it flaunts this in front of the caged bird. The caged bird, or slave stays in it’s cage hoping to get out and getting madder and madder while the free bird is flaunting its freedom. In “World’s Reward,” the aged dog is meant to relate to a slave like the caged bird in “Caged Bird.” The master of the dog relates to a slave owner because he used the dog while it was young and then it got old so he was going to dispose of it. In slave times the slave owners would have the slaves work until they got old and they were either killed or