38 pages • 1 hour read
Maya AngelouA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The poem’s main message is about the difference between freedom and captivity. Again, it is important to understand that the poem does not specify the reasons for this freedom or captivity; the poem is a universal expression of these two states of being.
In the poem, freedom is movement, life, energy, warmth, openness, and nature. The poem opens not just with a free bird, but with a free bird who is taking action. Angelou uses active verbs to show this: The bird leaps, floats, dips, dares, and claims.
The free bird uses nature for his own devices. He uses the wind, trees, and bugs to sustain himself. Because of his ability to use nature for its own well-being, the bird claims dominion over nature, similar to how God gives Adam dominion over nature in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible.
This free bird also experiences the vibrancy of life. Angelou personifies the wind, as it has a back upon which the bird can ride. She also compares the wind to the powerful rushing waters, as the bird “floats downstream / till the [wind’s] current ends” (Lines 3-4). The “orange sun rays” (Line 6) also energize the bird.
The second time Angelou describes the free bird in the fourth stanza, the bird again is free to engage with the breeze and all the aspects of nature he connects with, including the trees and the worms that he will eat.
By Maya Angelou
A Brave And Startling Truth
A Brave And Startling Truth
Maya Angelou
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
Maya Angelou
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
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Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name
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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
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Letter to My Daughter
Letter to My Daughter
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Mom & Me & Mom
Mom & Me & Mom
Maya Angelou
Mother, A Cradle to Hold Me
Mother, A Cradle to Hold Me
Maya Angelou
On the Pulse of Morning
On the Pulse of Morning
Maya Angelou
Phenomenal Woman
Phenomenal Woman
Maya Angelou
Still I Rise
Still I Rise
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The Heart of a Woman
The Heart of a Woman
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The Lesson
The Lesson
Maya Angelou