I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Metaphors 6 key examples

Angelou utilizes metaphor to compare her childhood as a Southern Black girl to a razor threatening a person's throat: rife with danger and hardship. She goes a step further, comparing her personal awareness of being different and out of place (both in society and amongst her peers) as rust atop that razor. A razor at the throat may be a danger in and of itself, but rust adds insult to injury, threatening the victim with tetanus and infection in addition to the sting of the blade. Angelou's feelings of alienation and difference, like rust, add insult to the injury of racist oppression. What's more, this additional insult is "unnecessary": in a society where Whiteness has been established as the "baseline," all other racial and ethnic groups tend to be subconsciously regarded as deviations. Angelou is already considered a deviation in White-centric American society, which is quite an extreme "displacement." Any further feelings of alienation would appear to be a horrific cosmic joke, an "unnecessary" cruelty.

In this passage, Angelou compares the Sheriff to a "gentle squire" and herself and her family to "deserving serfs." Angelou uses this figurative language to interpret the Sheriff's behavior, pointing out the irony in the fact that this man views himself as their beneficent savior. In reality, he works as a tool of the very White supremacist system that oppresses Angelou and her family.

It is also important to note that through the aforementioned metaphor, Angelou draws connections between European feudalism and the American South. Both the American South and European feudal states had a "ruling" class (feudal lords/kings in Europe, wealthy White people in the South) and an oppressed class (peasants/serfs in Europe, formerly-enslaved Black Americans in the South).

The metaphor used in this passage upends traditional power dynamics imposed by white supremacist institutions onto indigenous and Black people. In Angelou's analogy, White people are the animals, when typically it was Black people who were denigrated as an oppressed class and likened to "beasts." The metaphor also alludes to Western imperialism, again upending traditional power dynamics by positioning Angelou and her family as the colonizing "explorers."

Furthermore, Angelou separates Black and White people into categories of "man" and "animal," respectively. This choice of language implies that, as a young girl, Angelou viewed White people almost as an entirely different species. This viewpoint speaks to the extremity of segregation and anti-Black racism in Angelou's childhood environment.

Angelou likens these children to "playful apparitions"—ghosts, white as sheets, in whose existence she cannot believe. This is a symptom of the system of "complete segregation" in which Angelou grew up. She rarely sees White people, and when she does, they are intruders into her community at best and a source of active danger at worst. When Angelou does see White people, they appear to her child's mind as unreal or inhuman, because her social and physical separation from them has been so complete. 

Despite the fact that young White people pose a significantly smaller threat to Angelou and her family than White adults, Angelou remains on guard. The poor "White trash" children anger her, yes, but they also scare her. Even as young people with seemingly little agency, these White children have the power of institutional privilege behind them. They could very easily speak ill of Angelou and her family to their own White parents, who could, in turn, call in the KKK. Angelou compares the poor "White trash" children to ghosts because she cannot comprehend their reality; simultaneously, she compares them to ghosts because they carry with them the implicit threat of danger.

In the above excerpt, Angelou uses metaphor to compare herself and Mr. Freeman to a "needle" and a "camel," respectively. This metaphor must be understood within the context of Matthew 19:23-24, the Bible verse to which Angelou's statement alludes. In this verse, Jesus presents an analogy to his disciples, instructing them on wealth's moral pitfalls: "Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God'" (New International Version).

In Matthew, Jesus presents the idea of a "camel" going through "the eye of a needle" as inconceivable, using an analogy to demonstrate the near impossibility of immoral rich people entering heaven. Angelou repurposes this metaphor: she is the needle, forced to give beyond her limits because Mr. Freeman, the camel, cannot control himself or his pedophilic impulses.

Angelou presents several extremes as fact in this passage, using figurative language to emphasize the dire nature of this situation in her young mind. In the act of lying—which she does under duress and extreme trauma—a young Angelou believes she has "forfeited [her] place in heaven forever." She compares herself to a "gutless" doll, contextualizing her "lie" as an act of perceived cowardice. In actuality, the lie Angelou tells during the trial stems from fear rather than cowardice—she is scared of Mr. Freeman and takes his violent threats seriously.

Throughout the passage, Angelou echoes the alarmist words fed to her by older, religious adults. She fears both Mr. Freeman and the righteous fury of God, whom she has been told will send her to hell for lying or engaging in sexual "sin." Through figurative language and overstatement, Angelou conveys the stress that punishment-centric religious beliefs can place on young children.