Critical Essay on I Know Why the Caged Bird, Siddhartha and Allegory of the Cave

Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird

Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird seems to be one of the literary works of all time that has openly talked on the theme of racism.in the first chapter, she illustrates on her life as a young black girl and how this influenced her work as a writer. She writes about her exclusive suffering due to segregation in the US, and this particular story opens up the literary work of the book. Regardless, of her changing her residence to places like Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, it was still impossible to escape factors such as poverty, oppression, and injustice. Angelou to bring a whole new point of view in the world of literature, I realize that Angelou writes her autobiography, and she tries to bring out various theme such as racism, oppression, and poverty that one can go through in the US and other parts of the world, but she does so from her own story and making the reader empathize with her and finds solace in reading her literary work.

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Angelou finds much interest in reading as she is influenced the other literary works of likes like Shakespeare and she explores such literature work and gets to learn that black women could not go to school due to various factors such as racist stereotypes; however, she finds out that there are possibilities of bettering their lives as black people. I tend to find this particular idea have helped her to come up with the metaphor of the caged bird and identified a title for her work "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" The poem talks about t a bird covered in a cage, and its strive to be free is hard and full of pain, but it still struggles to seek freedom. I do feel that the struggles of the bird depict unjust confinements of racism, sexism, abuse that the likes of Angelou had to go through; however, she still has to sing and write her literary work for the world to read. Her work is put in a twisted manner that brings a poetic picture in the minds of readers.

The 'Allegory of the Cave'

The 'Allegory of the Cave' is a theory illustrated by Plato regarding human perception based on the knowledge acquired and that it has to be got from a philosophical reasoning point of view. In the literary work, he tries to differentiate people who think that sensory knowledge is the truth and those who actually know the truth.

The communication between Socrates and Glaucon maybe is not true as shown by Plato whether the allegory first came from Socrates or Plato is applying his mentor to help create his idea. During the interaction Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave that prisoners are locked up and that such prisoners have been in the cave all their life ever since childhood; all chained and both their legs and necks cannot move and again forced to face the wall. Nevertheless, a fire is lit behind them and a raised walkway. With a little twist from Socrates that imagines prisoners were to be freed and faced to the fire, the light would affect their eyes. And in the open, the prisoner finds the sun more severe. I feel that Plato tries to bring the theme of freedom and put it out that even if we feel to be free, still we will have to face specific challenges in our daily lives. This metaphor seems to make sense to the readers of this particular literary work throughout the world as he emphasizes on the theme of perseverance and struggles for freedom by people as long as they are aware of the truth and reality of life and what surrounds them.

'Siddhartha' by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha is written by Hermann Hesse and the story is mainly based the s early life and culture of the Buddha. The author was inspired to write the book when he visited India early before the occurrence of the. First World War. The central theme of the story is the search for the self-realization by a young man Brahman. The young man had to critically realize the antagonism between the reality of life and what he was being taught as the cultural practices in the society of Buddhism. This made him to abandon his comfortable life to wander to understand the reality of life. His primary goal was to find the facts that would enable him to overcome the fears of life and the contrasts of life which include the joy and sorrow, life and death. According to him going without food or fasting does not prove that individual is satisfied sensuality or even having wealth does not establish peace in once heart. He took time alone and goes by the river where he learns to listen and as a result, he realizes that there is a spirit of love within him and this makes him learn to accept the differences within human beings regarding behaviour and believes. By having such understanding, he grasps the wholeness of life and the blessing of having wisdom.

From the book, we find that Siddhartha being the son of Brahmin he tends to enjoy all the privilege while at the home village. But we see that as time goes and years are passing, and Siddhartha also grows older he changes his way life. He develops strong desire to acquire new a lot of wisdom and need for new experiences in life. His new passion for life makes him leave the safety of home together with his friend Govinda to join the Samanas who were the group of wandering ascetics. He goes out in search for the meaning and the truth in the outside world of suffering. He grows older, and after going through a lot of situations in life, he comes to the reality of life, which is also clear to us in the present world that there is no single and straight path to self-growth and importantly there is no one formula to human life. According to Siddhartha, we should always try to get the reality and purpose of life and everything we do in each moment in life; he insisted that the truth is still new, alive and forever changing so we should concentrate on knowing the reality.

Conclusion

I find all the literature work discussed seems to behaving related themes of freedom and struggle. Each of the authors brings out how the characters have strived to achieve their sense of freedom but it has never been that easy as it involves pain, blood and sweet. For instance, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird, she strives to be free from racism; the 'Allegory of the Cave 'the prisoners strive to be free and 'Siddhartha' also struggle to be free from cultural bondage.