Caged Bird Literary Elements

The unidentified speaker relates the experiences of the caged bird and the free bird.

The six-stanza poem is written in free verse. The poem includes rhymes, slant rhymes, and some—but not total—adherence to iambic meter.

"Dares to claim the sky" and "names the sky his own" are metaphors for the entitlement the speaker ascribes to the free bird as it flies. "Bars of rage" is a metaphor for the blinding anger the speaker ascribes to the caged bird.

Examples of alliteration in the poem include "seldom see through," "the fat worms waiting," "his shadow shouts." Examples of assonance include "on a dawn bright lawn," "dips his," and "current ends."

In juxtaposing the perspectives of the two birds, Angelou presents an instance of dramatic irony in which each bird is oblivious to the other bird's experience.

Poetry; free verse; allegory.

The setting shifts between the open sky of the free bird's world and the "narrow cage" of the caged bird.

The tone is both lamenting and resilient.

The protagonist is the caged bird; the antagonist is circumstance that limits his freedom.

The major conflict in the poem is that the caged bird longs for a freedom he has never known; he expresses that longing through song, using his voice to move through the space his body cannot access.

The poem reaches its climax when the sixth stanza repeats the lines of the third. The repetition of the caged bird singing his song of freedom underscores his resilience in the face of oppression but also the fact that he has not attained freedom.

When the caged bird "opens his throat to sing" for a second time, the speaker foreshadows the repetition of the third stanza that depicts the bird singing.

The title and premise of the poem is an allusion to Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poem "Sympathy," in which the speaker says, "I know why the caged bird sings."

The speaker personifies the caged bird by assigning symbolic terms of freedom to his song. The bird's shadow is also personified with the line "his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream."

There is hyperbole in the first stanza when the free bird "dares to claim the sky" as he simply flaps his wings. Hyperbole is also present in the line "he names the sky his own."