The Cage Bird's Partner: the Combined Fight against Oppression and Neglect by Maya and Bailey - Research Paper Example

Prof’s The Cage Bird’s Partner: the combined fight against oppression and neglect by Maya and Bailey “I Know Why theCaged Bird Sings” is Maya Angelou’s first novel, and arguably one of her greatest works. It takes the form of a literary autobiography, based on life events, but developed with literary themes to make it a work of literature that should be analyzed as such. It is the story of her abandonment, with her brother Bailey, at the ages of three and four respectively, and her struggle through life, with all of its hardships and its triumphs, until she reaches the age of seventeen. There are a wide array of thematic elements to this book, but the most prominent is the development of family bonds and struggles with racism, especially racism in self-perception, that occur throughout the work. Maya and Bailey’s relationship is thus central to the plot of the work. They struggle together and with each other through the issues that they face as they move through life in various places, including a small southern town, St. Louis, and California. Their relationship morphs significantly throughout the course of the novel, with both responding differently to the forces that they face as they move through life. Though Maya and Bailey obviously remain interconnected and care for each other greatly throughout the entire course of the novel, their relationship morphs greatly throughout. Abandonment and racism serve as the primary vehicles behind the development of Maya and Bailey’s relationship throughout the course of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. At the outset of the novel the two siblings are bound together inexorably through a shared hardship: the abandonment of their parents. Technically, their parents sent Maya and Bailey to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas – but in many fundamental ways this acts as an abandonment, especially because the person who was supposed to get them there safely abandoned them half way there (Angelou 3). This acts as the first displacement for the pair, which is a theme that is developed throughout the work: being displaced from family, from society through race, and from self through “internalized racism” (Henke 131). This early experience of displacement has a profound effect on the relationship of the pair, something that is only hinted at throughout the opening of the book. Their early experiences seem to rest almost entirely on shared support – one must imagine that the journey they took would have required them to support each other in extraordinary ways, and they seemed keen to continue to engage in this shared support throughout their early life. One of the main ways they supported each other in this time was through education – they both seemed to have keen minds, and would encourage each other in these pursuits. Again, this relationship is only hinted at – Maya mentioning that she and Bailey used to “rattle off times tables” incredibly rapidly to each other (Angelou 13), or, at another time, wanted to put on scenes from “Merchant of Venice” together, before they realized that their grandmother would probably not enjoy it because Shakespeare was white (15). Through these occasional mentions, it is easy to paint a picture of their childhood together: abandoned by their parents, not yet fully accepted by their new town, and not fully at home with their kin, whom they only grew to knew in the shadow of parental abandonment. Yet this abandonment seemed to have instilled each child with the idea that they could rely on each other, and indeed, had to, because they had no one else. In Maya’s simple statement that the thing she loved most in the world was “Bailey,” it is clear that their initial abandonment had made them incredibly close and interdependent (Angelou 17). It soon becomes clear, however, that they do not have an entirely equal relationship – at least in Maya’s eyes. It becomes clear very early in the work that Maya struggles significantly with her self-worth, largely because of the racist society that she lives in, and because of the characterization of her physical appearance. It is apparent that people in Maya’s life, presumably white people, insulted her appearance, connecting physical characteristics associated with her race with an inherent lack of value and legitimacy. People tell her that her skin is “shit colored” (21) and insult her for her wiry hair and large physique (21). Read these words, it is clear that Maya has begun to internalize ideals of beauty associated with whiteness: her hair, by being a symbol of her African heritage, is thus denigrated because it is unlike white people’s hair. Hair in particular has, since Angelou’s time, become a common trope of trying to fight against hegemonic ideals of beauty pressed on people by the society in which they live (Bush 39). Angelou thus has very little self worth, largely because of internalized racism. This internalized racism, however, also makes her admire her brother all the more. He seems to have attributes that are more acceptable. Unlike Maya, who is big, Bailey is “small and graceful” (21), and has hair that is wavy, unlike Maya’s. His skin, furthermore, is described as “velvety black,” contrasting as sharply as one could possibly imagine with the description of Maya’s as “shit colored” (21). Maya thus idolizes her brother for the exact reason that she feels very little worth for herself: she fails to meet societal expectations of beauty, while he succeeds admirably in meeting them, despite his race. He thus becomes a kind of ideal for her, the black person who can still be beautiful. She explicitly ties her self-worth to his opinion of her: after describing the vast differences in their physical appearance, she ends by simply she was ugly, he was beautiful, “and yet he loved me” (21). He also defended her from the other school children who teased her, always ready to get revenge for Maya’s sake, by insulting them as harshly (though often more cleverly) than they had insulted her (22). So while early in their life Bailey and Maya had a mutually supportive relationship, there was always a worshipful element in Maya’s opinion of her brother: he was superhumanly beautiful, and his love told her that there was something in her that must be worthwhile – and he was her hero, in that he defended her from all that was wrong with the world. This type of relationship, however, was not destined to last. Firstly, it would break down because of Maya’s need to reciprocate this kind of protectiveness, further consequences of their abandonment, and further racism. Most of these changes began when Maya and her brother briefly went with their father for a trip and returned to living with their mother. One of the first signs of a changing relationship was Maya’s incredible efforts to protect her brother. While Maya was living with her mother, her boyfriend began sexually molesting her before eventually raping her (70). During this event, and the investigation that eventually surrounds it, Maya does everything she can to protect her brother, even at her own expense. Firstly, her rapist tells her that if she ever tells anyone what happened, he will kill Bailey. This makes Maya lie again and again and again to protect her rapist, to the point where he receives no jail time (74). He then ends up dead, presumably murdered by Maya’s uncles for revenge, something that haunts Maya for years: she feels that her lying caused his death, and eventually enters into a vow of silence to stop her from killing others. Maya thus reciprocates the protection she had so long received from her brother, but in doing so begins to place the first walls between them, by lying to him, and then being consumed by the guilt associated with her lies. These walls intensify as a result of the ways that Maya and Bailey’s parental abandonment affected them. Maya did not connect especially closely to her parents: she saw her father taking her to her mother as essentially “one stranger” taking her to “another stranger” (56). For her, the abandonment created distance, the need to be self sufficient and to not re-attach with the people who had abandoned her. This is one of the main ways she separates from Bailey: his response is almost the polar opposite. He becomes infatuated by his mother, admiring her for her beauty and grace, and finding her even more appealing because of his long-term neglect. Much of his life then becomes a massive effort to impress his mother, because he simply cannot get over her. He begins dressing like her white compatriots do (135), and dating and sleeping with white prostitutes (140). Though Maya can see the origin of Bailey’s new troubling behavior, his mother cannot: she constantly attacks and berates him for it, possibly exacerbating his feelings of abandonment and pushing him even further in seeking approval from his mother by emulating her and her associates. Bailey’s love for his mother’s features start pulling him away from her. Firstly, it obviously deprives Maya of some of Bailey’s attention, as he is so focused on his mother. But even when physically removed from his mother, her abandonment and presence in his mind still shape his life. One instance is particularly telling: there is a night where Bailey stays out late, forcing his grandmother to go looking for him (96). Upon his return, he refuses to mention where he was, and receives a very severe whipping, but without groveling or resistance. He eventually confides in her that he had been watching a movie with a white actress, who so reminded him of his mother, that he stayed to watch a second showing. Maya notes that lately, Bailey seems to not have a “soul” (99). This passage has elements of both of the important themes discussed in this paper, race and abandonment. Clearly, Bailey’s working through is abandonment creates a strain on him, and a distance from his sister. But this abandonment also seems tied up with hegemonic notions of beauty: he sees beauty in his mother, and also in this white actress. Maya finds this the heart of irony, but it also demonstrates that both of their fascinations with their mother’s beauty relies on hegemonic views of the concept: very few famous actresses do not have hegemonicly beautiful features (DeGout 39). So race and abandonment combine in Bailey’s idealization of his mother to pull him away from Maya. Abandonment and racism have profound effects on both Maya and Bailey’s life, but it pushes them in largely different directions. Maya, upon returning to Arkansas, eventually settles with a matriarch of sorts in the region, and begins developing her love for reading. This provides her an outlet for her experiences, as she can compose and learn to start dealing with them. Her brother, however, has no such outlet and grows more and more distant from the world, interacting with it almost entirely through “sarcasm” (Angelou 117). His entire defense against the racist world he lives in is a kind of joking rebuke, and this defense mechanism rubs off on his relationship with his sister: even she cannot escape the sarcasm through which he views his world. There were two prominent features that shaped Bailey and Maya’s relationship: the early and continued abandonment of their parents, and the racist setting in which they had to try to find a way to live. In the opening of the book, both of these forces served to drive the pair together, to a certain degree: they formed a codependent relationship through it. And though they never lost all of their closeness, these forces also seemed to drive them apart. First, they were the cause of inequality in the relationship, where Maya valued her brother more than herself because of his fulfillment of hegemonic ideals of beauty. The return of their mother cast a further shadow over their lives, where these ideas of race and beauty further divided them. Finally, the defense mechanisms each developed served as final buttresses against the world, and also each other: Bailey developed a sneering sarcasm that even tainted his relationship with his sister. Works Cited Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1970. Print. Brush, Paula Stewart. "The Influence of Social Movements on Articulations of Race and Gender in Black Women's Autobiographies." Gender and Society 13.1 (1999): 120-37. Print. DeGout, Yasmin Y. "The Poetry of Maya Angelou: Liberation Ideology and Technique." The Langston Hughes Review 19 (2005): 36. Print. Henke, Suzette A. "Maya Angelou's Caged Bird as Trauma Narrative." The Langston Hughes Review 19 (2005): 22. Print Read More