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Situational Irony
Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Throughout I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou utilizes figurative language heavily as an element of her literary style, choosing to do so in moments of high emotion as a means of illustrating her childhood imagination.
In Chapter 13, Angelou utilizes figurative language to explore her emotions following Mr. Freeman's trial, including her feelings of fear at the thought of revealing forbidden information:
Instinctively, or somehow, I knew that because I loved [Bailey] so much I'd never hurt him, but if I talked to anybody else that person might die too. Just my breath, carrying my words out, might poison people and they'd curl up and die like the fat black slugs that only pretend. I had to stop talking.
As a child, the emotions evoked by Mr. Freeman's trial were extreme in nature. Angelou demonstrates this childhood emotional extremity through figurative language, comparing her breath and words to poison.
Angelou also frequently utilizes hyperbole or overstatement to evoke this childlike thought pattern, in which commonplace events or situations are made extreme by their relative newness. In Chapter 15, she utilizes overstatement, describing her reaction to being told to take off her clothes in front of the refined Mrs. Flowers:
Mrs. Flowers had known that I would be embarrassed and that was even worse. I picked up the groceries and went out to wait in the hot sunshine. It would be fitting if I got a sunstroke and died before they came outside. Just dropped dead on the slanting porch.
In this passage, what for an adult might be a mild embarrassment is amplified in young Maya Angelou's mind as a mistake worthy of death.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis:
Throughout I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou utilizes figurative language heavily as an element of her literary style, choosing to do so in moments of high emotion as a means of illustrating her childhood imagination.
In Chapter 13, Angelou utilizes figurative language to explore her emotions following Mr. Freeman's trial, including her feelings of fear at the thought of revealing forbidden information:
Instinctively, or somehow, I knew that because I loved [Bailey] so much I'd never hurt him, but if I talked to anybody else that person might die too. Just my breath, carrying my words out, might poison people and they'd curl up and die like the fat black slugs that only pretend. I had to stop talking.
As a child, the emotions evoked by Mr. Freeman's trial were extreme in nature. Angelou demonstrates this childhood emotional extremity through figurative language, comparing her breath and words to poison.
Angelou also frequently utilizes hyperbole or overstatement to evoke this childlike thought pattern, in which commonplace events or situations are made extreme by their relative newness. In Chapter 15, she utilizes overstatement, describing her reaction to being told to take off her clothes in front of the refined Mrs. Flowers:
Mrs. Flowers had known that I would be embarrassed and that was even worse. I picked up the groceries and went out to wait in the hot sunshine. It would be fitting if I got a sunstroke and died before they came outside. Just dropped dead on the slanting porch.
In this passage, what for an adult might be a mild embarrassment is amplified in young Maya Angelou's mind as a mistake worthy of death.
Related Themes:
