I know why the caged bird sings door Maya Angelou

Deel A: Ø Titel: I know why the caged bird sings Ø Auteur: Maya Angelou Ø Jaar publicatie: 1969 Ø Aantal blz. Tekst: 225 Ø Plaatsen waar het verhaal zich afspeelt: meestal in Stamps, Arkansas, in de winkel van Maya’s oma, maar ook in st. Louis, Long Beach, California en in San Francisco. Ø Tijdsperiode waarin het verhaal zich afspeelt: van toen Maya drie was t/m dat ze 16 was. Summary: The main person in the book, Marguerite Johnson (Maya), is a black southers girl and lives with her grandmother and her brother (Bailey) in Stamps. Her grandmother owns a store. Maya and Bailey go to school, but they also have to do some chores in and around the store. When Maya is seven years old, suddenly her father (who’s name is also Bailey) shows up and they go with him to St. Louis to see their mother. They live with their mother for a while. She lives with a man, Mr. Freeman, who abuses Maya. Fist he only touches her, but once he actually rapes her. She’s very sick for a few days and it hurts very bad. When her mother finds out what happened, Maya and Bailey are being send back to Stamps to live with their grandmother again. From the moment Mr. Freeman rapes her, Maya only talks when it’s absolutely necessary. She just hangs around the store and reads and learns, but she’s not really living. The first person who helps her is Mrs. Flowers. She learns Maya that talking is important for communicating, and that reading and learning alone just wasn’t enough. At a picnic Maya meets Louise who becomes her fist real friend. By talking to her and just having fun, Maya feels better and better. ‘....and after being a woman for three years I was about to become a girl.’ When Maya has a tooth-ache, her grandmother takes her to a white dentist (the only one near). She had helped him out during the depression, and she asks him to return that favour. He refused with a rude ‘I ain’t gonna mess around in no niggah’s mouth’. Because of that they had to travel a long way to go to the nearest black dentist. One day their grandmother tells Maya and Bailey that she is going to take them to California, to their parents. After preparing the journey carefully they leave. They live in Los Angeles for about six months, and then the apartment in San Francisco is ready for them. Their grandmother returns to Stamps, and Maya and Bailey finely live with their mother (their parents are divorced). One summer, Maya’s father invites her to spend the holidays with him. It is the fist time that Maya is going on a vacation. Her father has a girlfriend, Dolores. She is much younger than he is, and Maya is very surprised to see her. Dolores is also surprised to see Maya, and from the first moment they see each other, they don’t like what they see. During her stay with her father, Maya and Dolores dislike each other more and more. It comes to an outburst when Maya and ‘big’ Bailey come home from a trip to Mexico. First Bailey and Dolores have an argument. Dolores accuses Bailey of letting his children come between them. He leaves the house. Maya, having heard their conversation (the house has got very thin walls), wants to console Dolores. She walks into the living room and tells her that she never meant to come between her and her Dad. It doesn’t help much, and they also have an argument. When Dolores calls Maya’s mother a whore, Maya slaps her in her face and they start fighting. Maya frees herself from the grip of Dolores and goes outside. Dolores comes out with a hammer, trying to hit Maya. Maya runs to the car and locks herself in. She finds herself bleeding. She has been cut. Her father, who was visiting neighbours, comes to her rescue and brings Dolores back to the house. He takes Maya to a woman who puts a bandage on the wound. After this he drops her off at friends. The next day, when she finds herself alone in that strange house, she decides to run away. She comes across a junkyard with carcasses of old cars. She decides to spend the night in one of them. When she wakes up the next morning there are a bunch of children watching her. They are also homeless, and they live at the junkyard. She stays with them for a month. They earn money by hunting down unbroken bottles and selling them, mowing the lawns and other small jobs. After that month she calls her mother and askes her to pick her up. She comes home again and goes to school. Bailey has problems with their mother, and eventually he leaves home. Then Maya decides to take a job. She wants to be a conductor at a streetcar. She goes to the office of the Market Street Railway Company. The receptionist is surprised to see her (because she’s black), and she tries very hard to get rid of her. That goes on for three weeks, and every day Maya comes in to the office and asks for a job interview. Then she gets the job. She reads the book ‘The Well of Loneliness’. It’s about lesbianism and sex. Reading this book and developping something on her vagina, Maya becomes terrified that she might be turning into a lesbian. Her mother tells her her body is perfectly normal, but Maya still isn’t convinced. Two weeks later, a classmate of her stays for the night. When she undresses, Maya sees her breasts. She is stunned. The idea that she was moved by looking at a womans breast frightens her, and she decides that to make sure she is normal, she needs a boyfriend. She makes a plan, and one day when she passes a hansom and populair boy, she says ‘Hey. Would you like to have a sexual intercourse with me?’ The boy is stunned. He takes her with him to his room and they ‘make love’ (there wasn’t exactly much passion involved). Three weeks later Maya finds herself pregnant. She doesn’t tell anybody but Bailey until she gets her school diploma. She was quite sure that her mother would have made her quit school if she would have told her immediatly. When she does tell, she has only three more weeks to go. It’s a boy. Maya is very frightened to touch him. She’s afraid she might hurt him. One night Maya’s mother comes into her bedroom with her son. She insists that he will sleep with her. Maya is terrified, but after a while she falls asleep. A little later her mother wakes her up. Her son lies next to her, and she’s protecting him with her arm. Het beantwoorden van de vragen: A 1 Mention two characteristic qualities of a person in the book Marguerite is the most important person in the book. She’s a very brave young girl. There happens a lot in her life. For example she has been raped by Mr. Freeman when she was eight years old and she had to testify against him in court. She also had to see how her grandmother had been smashed and hit by a few white girls. Through all that she’s very strong and lives her live further. She didn’t give up. She’s also a person that, when she has something on her mind, she’s is going to do that. Her perseverance is large. In the end, for example, she wants to have sex, so she asks a boy immediately to make love.
2 Describe the most important event in the book I think the most important event in the book was, when Maya has been raped by the friend of her grandmother. When that happened she was eight years old. She had slept with him, Mr. Freeman and her grandmother in one bed, because she was frightened that night. The next morning she was alone with him. He touched her everywhere and she liked it. Then he felt between her legs and she had to feel the thing between his legs. Then he said: ‘Now, I don’t hurt you, don’t get scared.’ And he raped her. Maya thought that it was usual that he did this to her, because other people do ‘it’ too. B 1 Which character in the book changes most in the course of the story? The character of the most important person, Marguerite Johnson, changes the most. She tells the story in her own perspective. You see the story from her eyes. The whole book describes her youth. From the age of tree till she was sixteen. First she is a real child, she believes almost everything that is said by adults. When she grows up she sees the world around her, she sees that she can’t trust everyone. And when she grows up, she give her opinion a lot more than when she was three. She sticks up for herself. 2 Are there any tragic persons, circumstances or events in the book? There are a lot tragic circumstances and events in the book. For example the rape of Maya. I think it’s very bad to rape someone. Mr. Freeman had to keep his hands of Maya, it’s her body. An other tragic event in the book is, when the grandmother of Maya was attacked by a couple of white girls without any reasons. They hit her grandmother and she can’t do anything about it, only watch. I think this is awful that some white girls hit an old lady and threaten her cruel, just because she’s black. C 1 Mention two characters in the book that have a good relationship with each other The two characters in the book which are very close, are Marguerite and Bailey. They’re brother and sister. Bailey is one year elder than his sister. They care a lot for each other
and love each other very much. When Marguerite had been raped, Mr. Freeman says he’ll kill her brother if she will tell anyone about it. She’s is very frightened, because she loves his brother very much and don’t want to lose him. When Mr. Freeman leaves town, she asks herself if her brother’s now out of danger and if she tells him, will he still love her. When she tells him and lies the next day in the hospital, Bailey is crying next to her. 2 Is there any violence in the book? There isn’t much violence in the book. The only time when there is violence, is when the grandmother of Maya has been whacked by a few white girls. She is a victim of racial discrimination. So just because she’s black. Maya and her grandmother are just walking down the street and when they see the girls coming, Momma tells Maya to go inside a shop. She self stays on the street. Momma has to sit on her knees, after she has been clapped on her back, aped and hit, and the girls did a kind of puppet dance. When Maya’s grandmother began to sing the song ‘Bread of heaven, bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more’, they left and went to town.
Deel B: Vraag 1: Je hebt nu twee boeken gelezen. Welk boek was het leukst en heb je met het meest plezier gelezen? Waarom? Het eerste boek dat ik heb gelezen was ‘Bridges of Madison County’. Dit vond ik een erg mooi boek. Het was erg boeiend en helemaal niet saai. Het onderwerp sprak me ook wel aan: een onmogelijke liefdesrelatie. Maar ondanks dit, vind ik denk ik toch het tweede boek, ‘I know why the caged bird sings’, mooier. Het is een erg mooi en goed verhaal. Het heeft me erg aangegrepen. Wat Maya in haar leven allemaal niet heeft meegemaakt is erg veel. Ze is opgegroeid door haar oma en haar oom. Dan wordt ze op haar achtste verkracht. Ze ziet hoe haar oma in elkaar wordt geslagen, op haar dertiende trekt ze bij haar moeder in, gaat op vakantie met haar vader, en leeft op haar zestiende tussen zwervers. Het verhaal is bovendien op een boeiende manier geschreven. Vraag 2: Geef aan waarom je vindt dat je klasgenoten dit boek ook moeten lezen of juist niet. Waarom? Dit werk van Maya Angelou zou ik zeker aanraden aan mijn klasgenoten. Het is erg fascinerend om de biografie van Maya te lezen. Wat ze allemaal wel niet heeft meegemaakt in haar leven als zwart meisje. Ook hoe ze over de dingen in het leven dacht, haar gevoelens en haar verlangens. Ik vond het een erg goed (lees: aangrijpend) thema: racisme en discriminatie van de zwarten in Amerika in de jaren 30. Na dit boek gelezen te hebben, begrijp ik veel beter hoe de mensen zich toen gevoeld hebben en misschien nog steeds doen. Het boek is dan ook zeker een aanrader! Vraag 3: Laat eens weten hoe je het lezen van de twee boeken die voor dit schooljaar verplicht waren, ervaren hebt. Vind je het een goede zaak dat vwo-scholieren verplicht worden dit soort dingen te doen? Ik vond het leuk om de twee boeken (Bridges of Madison County en I know…) te lezen. Ik ben blij dat ik deze twee boeken gekozen heb, omdat ze me allebei erg aanspraken. Het zijn allebei twee goede boeken. Ze worden denk ik ook niet voor niets tot de Blackbirds gerekend. Bovendien vond ik het fijn dat we niet zo véél boeken voor Engels hoefden te lezen. Maar één per jaar. Zo had ik genoeg tijd, ook voor mijn andere boekverslagen van andere talen, want daar hebben we er al zoveel van. Ik vind het ook wel goed dat de boekverslagen verplicht worden, ook al houd ik niet zo erg van lezen. Zo leer je de taal een beetje kennen en ook je leesvaardigheid wordt er beter van. Het maken van de boekverslagen viel nog wel mee. Je moet wel goed de inhoud van het boek kennen. Anders kun je de vragen niet beantwoorden.