Point of View

"Caged Bird" is written from the third-person omniscient point of view. It is narrated by an unnamed speaker who does not appear to have any agency other than in describing the two birds throughout the poem. It may be easy for readers to forget that there is a speaker at all, and this seeming lack of a speaker is an intentional attribute of the poem that allows Angelou to focus on the images she provides. Rather than attribute the major themes and motifs of the poem to an individual, the poem uses its third-person omniscient perspective as a way to challenge readers to think more broadly about what is meant by the contrasting images of the caged bird and the free bird. The effacement of the speaker suggests that this is undoubtedly how the world is: composed of two types of people, some free and...