The dreary setting does much to set the mood of the story, also note the stark contrast between the “ash-gray” of the sea and the sand which “glimmered like powdered light.” The description of the world here as being dark and grey further reinforces the previous …show more content…
His age amplifies, and then his destitution, his effort, his inability to move, but it’s not until the last word of the paragraph that we learn he also has wings. His magical wings, which should lift him to great heights, become the very things that keep him from even getting out of the mud.
The two elements of the old man seem to battle each other for the couple’s attention: his age and his depleted figure, sucked of its youth, vs. his once-majestic and magical wings. The image is not only bizarre for its magical realism element, but for the combination of that with the very real, grounded, and human – old …show more content…
Racism encloses those who fall victim to it into a cage because they cannot act or exist in the eyes of others outside of their racist beliefs, because of this cage, the bird can only “stalk[s] down his narrow cage” and remain encaptured by racism. The bird, can’t see through the bars of rage and hates being trapped in the prison of racism. As the bird is entrapped, his wings “clipped”, and his feet “tied” by racism, singing becomes the only form of freedom left for him.
Though the caged bird sings and longs for freedom, it’s notes are fearful — weak because it is unsure if it will ever be free. Angelou shows the reader that to exist outside of the restraining cage is the bird’s strongest desire. Caged and oppressed by racism, African Americans at the time dreamed of a freedom to exist without the judgements and stereotypes of racism and claim the