those love and care by easily giving her body to him. ‘I greedily consume your presence’ also indicates that the woman enjoys what the man commits to her.
However, she still does not realize that she has been raped and trapped by the man’s pretence. One day, she will absolutely regret for what has happened to her.
When you have withdrawn your self and the magic, when
only the smell of your love lingers between
my breasts, then, only then, can I greedily consume
your presence. lines 9-15 in poem F
Through this poem, Maya Angelou once again intends to warn all women to be very careful with men. Angelou believes that men have many tricks to trap
women into the rape.
4.3 The Superiority of Men
Men are culturally regarded as creatures who are born to deserve superiority. Through poem G, the superiority of a man is really revealed.
The first line in the first stanza of this poem G presents ‘a free bird’ which refers to a man. ‘A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream
till the current ends’ shows that the man is absolutely courageous and powerful. And when the free bird ‘dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim
the sky’, it is obvious that the man can do whatever he wants to do. He is willing
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to any challenge, even flies to the sun and touches the sky. He really shows how arrogant he is. And this is reflected in lines 1-7 of this poem:
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky. lines 1-7 in poem G
The superiority of a man can also be seen in lines 23-26 of this poem. Welsh 2001:19 argues, “men quickly learn that they not only have to possess
power, they must also use it”. Thus, it is obvious that within these four lines, the strong man, who is depicted as the free bird, is shown as the obviously dominant
creature with his absolute power and superiority. ‘Breeze’ and ‘winds’ also show that the man can experience all of the comforts. In addition to that, ‘fat worms’ is
used to describe the opportunities that are always waiting for the man and his head is always held high with the hope of success just like ‘he names the sky his own.’
The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.
lines 23-26 in poem G Finally, through this poem, Maya Angelou intends to show how the
superiority of men really exists. And in its relation to feminism, it is obvious that Angelou wrote this poem to convey her idea that the majority of women all over
the world are not born to deserve superiority because as Ortner 1996:21 argues,
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“the secondary status of women is one of the true universals, a pan-cultural fact”. Thus, it is obvious that women are only placed as second-class humans whose
status and position are inferior to men’s. And finally, this kind of discriminating statement becomes what feminism strongly opposes and criticizes because
feminism itself is aimed at establishing equal rights between women and men.
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CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
