Preview

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
876 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
<b>1. What Does Marguerite observe about the cotton pickers?</b>
<br>She notices that their attitudes depend on the time of day. She says in the morning they are full of life and in the evening they are tired out and dismal from all the work.
<br>
<br><b>2. Why do white people seem un-real to Marguerite? </b>
<br>She said white people 's feet were too small, and their skin was see-through, and they walked on their heels, not on the balls of their feet.
<br>
<br><b>3. Explain how their education in Stamps prepared Marguerite and Bailey. How is school different in St. Louis from the one they attended in Stamps? </b>
<br>Marguerite and Bailey were prepared for school because of their education in Stamps. They learned arithmetic through working in their store and they said they read so much in Stamps because there was nothing else to do. They also said the schools were different because of their teachers.The teachers in Stamps, they said, were very formal they came imported from a Negro College in Arkansas. The teachers in St. Louis were very siddity they were very strict and had the same characteristics that white folk had.
<br>The walked with their knees together and their lips tight.
<br>
<br><b>4. How does Ritie feel about Mr. Freeman's death? </b>
<br>She said she felt guilty and had forfeited her place in heaven. She said she was pure evil,because she had lied about him in court and that this lie caused his death.
<br>
<br><b>5. Why is Ritie so offended that she wants to quit working for Mrs. Cullinan? How does she get out of her job? </b>
<br>Mrs. Cullinan calls Ritie not by her given name, Marguerite, but by the name of Mary, which annoys Ritie. She is fired after she intentionally breaks some of Mrs. Cullinan's valuable family dishes.
<br>
<br><b>6. Tell what happens at Ritie's eighth grade graduation. </b>
<br>Ritie is angered that white's only think that Negroes are only good for being athletes, maids, and other small jobs. She hates how blacks are

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Rosa Parks

    • 2278 Words
    • 10 Pages

    For the beginning of her school year, Rosa attended a local for blacks, Spring Hill Church School. The white children started school earlier in the year than the blacks. The black children began school in October; this allowed the children help their parents with the farm. The white children also got to ride the bus to school, while the black children had to walk to school. Rosa’s tonsils were infected as a child and throughout most of her teenage life, so this caused her to miss a lot of school. During her fifth grade year, she missed so much school that she got held back.…

    • 2278 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sheila was next to turn Eva down, all because of her bad temper. After “two months” of barely surviving, after Mr Birling fired her, Eva found a job at a dress shop. This dress store was Millwards, which happened to be one of Sheila’s favourite dress shops and Eva was “very…

    • 1525 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    As with any extreme imposing, she ran a risk of wardrobe malfunction. She even heard one slave say, "I'm darned if that feller ain't turning white” as her sweat caused the silver nitrate to fade. Edmonds responded to the slaves with: "I've always expected to come white at some time; my mother's a white woman."…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” Maya Angelou describes her life as a young awkward black girl in the American South during the 1930s and subsequently in California during the 1940s. when Maya is only three her parents divorce and ship Maya and her older brother, Bailey, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, in rural Stamps, Arkansas. Annie, who Maya and Bailey call Momma, runs the only store in the black section of Stamps and becomes the central moral figure in Maya’s childhood. It is actually interesting how much clout she has in the town for a black woman.…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dixie's Perspective

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages

    She realized she was better not having friends like them and that she was raised with better morals and values. 2. How do low-income families of the barrio survive? How would you describe their work…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    negative effects on not only the black slaves, but white slaveholders as well. She speaks to her…

    • 832 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This essay that I’m going to talk about is about Ruby Bridges. She was the first black black child to cross an invisible line and enter an all-white school. She was only six years old when she went to the school in New Orleans on November 12, 1960. On her first day to the school she was escorted by three men that were white. Also on the first day of school there was a group of white people gathered by Franz Elementary school. When Ruby started walking into the school people would say mean things to her and wanted to hurt her. They would say 2,4,6,8, we don’t want to integrate. The white people would also carry signs saying “No blacks aloud in an all-white school.” She stuck through year of injustices and at the end there were more.…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is often said that every man is born equal. I disagree, however, some are born into more luxurious lives, some are born disabled with no way to recover, and some are born with a special “ticket” through life called talent. In fact, the only time that we are truly equal is in death. No one gets to buy, run, swim, jump, or debate their way out of death. This is a fact shown clearly to the reader in Maya Angelou’s book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in Chapter 26 when she states, “... and all the way I communed with death’s angels, questioning their choice of time, place, and person”, (page 163). I learned something from her quote that I can relate to my real life as well. We may not be able to escape death, and neither can those around us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do great things that will leave behind a legacy in this world. I can’t say that I immediately moved forward after the incident, but I did manage to do great things that year despite the tragedy that occurred.…

    • 960 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Being black, which led to prejudice was a main theme in this entire book. There was not only a prejudice between whites and blacks, but between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned blacks. Lighter-skinned blacks tried to act as if they were higher class to the darker skinned blacks.…

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an inspiring story by well-known author Dr. Maya Angelou. Angelou is known for her many outstanding literary works. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou tells the story of her life struggles and how she was able to overcome many obstacles in her life to become the famous author she is today. Angelou’s life story is inspiring and she tells it in a way that really makes you understand how she felt as she endured abandonment, discrimination, molestation and growing up with the low self- esteem of a black girl in the south. Despite all the things that Angelou endured, she managed to discover literature and her passion and talent for writing literature changed her life. It is inspiring to read about how she was able to overcome everything she went through and still managed to…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    She says that she is not scared to die. Saying that she is not afraid to die for breaking a law is a prideful move. She also says to the citizens as she is being taken away to the tomb:…

    • 503 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Pathos: “I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me!” those sentences shows she tried to connect with all the mothers.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    White's purpose of writing is to provide a long overdue examination of female slavery, ending long held myths and exemplifying the distinctive struggles that slave women faced in their day to day survival. Deborah Gray White’s book, Ar’n’t I a Woman? categorizes black women in the context of the two dogmas they faced in the antebellum South—the Southern feminine model of the dependent, physically inert female, and the tougher imagery of tough labor and dehumanization that was experienced daily in the lives of slaves. According to White, the slave woman’s character is defined by white society intertwined perilously between these two images. In this sense, slave women found themselves doubly victimized: “For antebellum black women…sexism was…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Editors. "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000." American Library Association. 2007. 27 Feb. 2008.…

    • 2750 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    She calls upon the of a number of maids who works for her friends; Aibileen, Minny and Pascagoula in order to make her book a real like interpretation of the struggles they face on a daily bases. Jackson has a community that seems to be very racist and oblivious and close minded towards change and fait treatment towards citizens that reside there. The community seemingly split in two divided over an adequate racial line that has been passed down from generations to generations. Stern guidelines and regulations are put in place in order to separate the blacks and white. The writer gives us a glimpse of the Mississippian world back in the day and how maids were treated and the amount of racism and hatred that occurred in Jackson Mississippi. White Mississippians had been brought up and through social conditioning they had a mentality that prevented them to change their views and allow blacks to live the same luxury they had. Whites had more freedom blacks had, they allowed their communities to grow and flourish whereas blacks’ community became congested and overcrowded due to the restrictions preventing their community to grow “Jackson is just one white neighbourhood after the next” and “the coloured part of town be one big…

    • 1770 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics