Caged Bird TWIST Analysis

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Caged Bird TWIST Analysis
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Caged Bird by Maya Angelou

"Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou

By Lauren Ayube

Published in 1983 in Maya Angelou’s poetry collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing, “Caged Bird” is about the experiences and life views of a free bird versus a caged bird. The metaphor of the two birds illustrates the difference between privilege and power, and suffering and resilience. It also symbolizes the difference between African Americans and white people during the Civil Rights Movement.


TWIST Acronym for Literary Analysis

TWIST Graphic Organizer

Lesson Plans by Rebecca Ray

With the TWIST method, students are asked to look for and analyze the following terms: tone, word choice, imagery and detail, style, and theme. Learn more about how to make prose analysis fun and engaging with storyboards!




Caged Bird

Storyboard Description

Create a TWIST analysis for Maya Angelou's poem "Caged Bird".

Storyboard Text

  • T - TONE
  • DREAMSHOPESFUTUREOPPORTUNITY
  • W - WORD CHOICE
  • I - IMAGERY
  • S - STYLE
  • But a bird that stalksdown his narrow cagecan seldom see throughhis bars of rage
  • The caged bird singswith a fearful trillof things unknownbut longed for still
  • T - THEME
  • The tone of this poem is sad and serious. One example of this is, "But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams."
  • When describing the free bird, Angelou uses bright and happy words such as dawn, sun rays, and bright lawn. When she is talking about the caged bird, however, she uses dark words such as fearful, rage, and nightmare.
  • "And dips his wing in the orange sun rays, and dares to claim the sky." Angelou is showing the reader that the bird is free to fly the beautiful, radiant sky with no boundaries.
  • This poem is unstructured. Sometimes it rhymes, the number of syllables per line is inconsistent, and there is some repetition. This is a free verse poem.
  • The two main themes in this poem are freedom and captivity. The free bird represents white people, while the caged bird represents the oppressed African American people.
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