Character AnalysisI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya's beautiful, vivacious biological mother, Vivian Baxter, emerges as an important character in her daughter's life. Vivian endures as a black woman in a white man's world by displaying strength, honesty, and toughness, which lead to self- preservation. Vivian lives within the St. Louis jazz society where blacks are faced with "... the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well- dressed." Ms. Angelou provides her readers with a vivid description of an unwilling mother thrust in and out of maternal situations during a thirteen-year span in which she survives as an entertainer in bars from St. Louis to San Francisco. Despite displaying character traits that may be interpreted as unmotherly, Vivian Baxter is, nevertheless, a positive role model for her daughter, Maya. Vivian is a very self- centered human being who considers herself her number one priority. Even so, she never doubts her love for her children, and mothers them in the only way she knows. Vivian abandons her children, Bailey and Maya, when they are very young. Written from the author's point of
Finally, Vivian is stubborn and tough from growing up black in a white world. She has succeeded, makes a living for herself, and is well known and respected in a time when most women are not. Perhaps the road has been easier for her because of her physical beauty and being very light skinned. She is so attractive, Maya and her brother can even pretend a white movie star is their mother. They comment, "She was too beautiful to have children." Vivian dances and sings at a bar, and, according to Maya, "talked with her whole body and snapped her fingers louder than anyone in the whole world." Her mother's world is so different from anything Maya had ever known that she seemed almost unreal. "To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power." An additional character trait the reader discovers about Vivian is that she is very blunt and straight- forward when dealing with matters. When she discovers that Maya has been skipping school, she does not explode into a rage like many adults would. Instead, she simply tells her daughter that if there were no tests in school one day, and she was caught up in her schoolwork, she could tell her mother and not attend. This way of handling the situation makes it nearly impossible for Maya to continue to be truant, and the matter is solved quickly and easily. Another time, Maya is afraid she is turning into a lesbian. Vivian deals with the situation nonchalantly, and tells Maya that she is perfectly normal. "...The Man upstairs, he don't make mistakes. He gave you to me to be my girl and that's just what you are." Vivian knows how to tame Maya's fears without embarrassing her. A year later, when the children arrive in St. Louis to live with their mother, Vivian is not really prepared to be a parent, but attempts to m
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Approximate Word count = 1216
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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