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38 pages 1 hour read

Maya Angelou

Caged Bird

Maya AngelouFiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1983

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Literary Device Questions

1. What literary devices does the poet use to contrast freedom and captivity?

A) Rhyme scheme

B) Hyperbole

C) Personification

D) Extended metaphor

2. To what literary work does the “caged bird” make an allusion?

A) “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats: “Singest of summer in full-throated ease”

B) “To a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley: “And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest”

C) “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar: “he must fly back to his perch and cling”

D) “Hope is a thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson: “And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard”

3. What is the effect of the enjambment in Stanza 1?

A) It mimics flying.

B) It echoes the stream.

C) It moves the current.

D) It brightens the sun.

4. Why does Stanza 3 repeat?

A) It creates the musical and religious lyricism of the poem.

B) It emphasizes that the bird does not yet have its freedom.

C) It focuses the poem on the caged bird above the free bird.

D) It shows contrast between the free wind and the captive ground.

5. What is the effect of alliteration in the following line: “and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees”?

A) The repeating /t/ sound contrasts soft and hard.

B) The repeating /s/ sound echoes sighing.

C) The repeating /th/ sound creates rhythm.

D) The repeating long vowel sound /ee/ lengthens the line.

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