What may lead to a lack of self empowerment?
The poem “Caged Bird”, shows themes of self empowerment and the desire of freedom to express one’s self as a human being. What are factors that can diminish someones confidence or self empowerment? A rejection or refusal of hope. In the poem, we see a free bird and a trapped bird who are both pursuing the same thing: a hope for their future. The free bird has all it’s resources in close proximity and it “claims the sky it’s own,” while singing. The trapped bird is tied down, and finds it harder and harder to sing, or hope for a better day. If a society rejects hope, or in this case “clips someone’s wings”, they have a disadvantage of accomplishment and self expression in their life. Some haven’t even had a choice; before they were born it was their destiny to be in this predicament: chained up by discrimination and barred in by the judgements of others without choice. After numerous rejections, a person can start to build tall walls, blocking and weakening themselves from the pain that the feeling brings. Just as the bird, they are trapped and can hardly find their own empowerment to look out beyond their situation.
This picture sums up the entirety of the caged bird’s story. The “bars of rage” block and taint it’s view of hope: the sunlight. It is still visible, but like the “distant hill” it can be easily lost in the thick darkness of the jail cell. This photo also shows how easy it can be to loose empowerment when put in a place of darkness and starved from hope.
Chelsea Davis
English 10 H
I really liked how you showed the parallels between society and the relation of the physical walls in the poem and the walls that we build to protect ourselves from rejection. This definitely gives the poem a new meaning in that the caged bird is not only angry at society but also angry at himself for letting that situation happen. After reading this post I find that the part of the poem that reads, “bars of rage,” has a much stronger feeling attached to it because the bird can’t see through his own rage that he has against himself.