Analysis of Sympathy In Sympathy, Paul Laurence Dunbar portrays the caged bird and elaborates upon its presence to develop a deeper meaning. As the author looks at the caged bird, and he feels its pain. It’s stuck in a cage, it can’t fly around as birds are meant to do, and it’s suffering since it spends countless time thrashing about against the bars that enclose it within its cage. The fact that the speaker says he “knows what the caged bird feels” suggests that he himself experiences the pain that the bird feels. After all, the bird is suffering because it isn’t free.
This can allude to the African-American lifestyle back during Jim Crow’s time since the cage bird resembles a black individual and how they felt “caged” and oppressed during slavery times. “Sympathy” is a lyric poem, since it gives us a glimpse into the speaker’s thoughts and emotions. Even though a lot of this poem describes what the caged bird feels, we can understand it as a lyric because the speaker identifies so closely with the caged bird’s pain. After all, the poem begins with the words “I know what the caged bird feels.
So the speaker gives us an insight into the bird’s feelings and pain in order to give us insight into his own feelings and ain. In regards to syntax, the meter of this poem is generally written in tetrameter, with varying iambic and anapestic stresses–this poem is divided into four feet, or a “tetrameter. ” However, the last line of each stanza is only three feet long, or a “trimeter. ” In the first six lines, there are four stressed syllables per line. These are each accompanied by either one unstressed syllable, or two unstressed syllables.
Another thing to notice, of course, is the rhyme scheme: ABAABCC, where each letter represents that line’s end rhyme. The first and third stanzas share the same rhyme scheme, while there’s just a slight ariation in the second stanza, which features two end rhymes instead of the usual three. The effect is even more confining in terms of the poem’s form. This poem exasperates the idea of imprisonment. The regular form, the consistent meter, the strict pattern of the rhyme scheme-all of these things create a subtle, but persistent, sense of confinement.
It’s as though we’re trapped in the cage right along with the bird. The speaker of “Sympathy” uses repetition in a way that allows us to understand how he’s feeling, through his identification with the caged bird. This speaker isn’t a happy speaker, and he makes ure that we know that through his use of repetition In the first stanza, the speaker repeats the words “I know what the caged bird feels” twice, at the beginning and the end of the stanza. By telling us that he knows how the “caged bird” feels, he implies that, like the bird, he feels trapped.
He uses repetition to get his point across here. In the second stanza, the words “I know why the caged bird beats his wing” are repeated, at the end of the stanza: “I know why he beats his wing! ” Here, again, we can see the speaker emphasizing his identification with the caged bird through repetition. These lines are also a variation on the repeated lines in the first stanza: “I know what the caged bird feels. ” So the speaker uses repetition with variation in order to hammer home to us the idea that he’s stuck. He doesn’t have freedom.
In the final stanza, we get some more repetition, with the words “I know why the caged bird sings. ” Here, again, the speaker uses repetition to emphasize his identification with the caged bird. “Sympathy” is all about wishing for freedom and hating on confinement. After all, it’s a poem about a “caged bird,” a bird that isn’t free to fly around and eat little worms or uild a nest in a tree-which is, you know, what birds are meant to do. But the speaker describes this caged bird in order to describe his own lack of freedom and oppression.
He feels like the caged bird because, like that bird, he isn’t free. This is a poem about a bird, but this bird isn’t flying around, chirruping happily from tree to tree. It’s a poor little birdie that’s been hurt. While we might think that a poem about a bird wouldn’t have much to do with violence, the speaker of this poem in fact presents us with an image of an innocent bird in order to show s all the violence and trauma that it experiences in its cage. When we don’t have freedom, like this poor little bird trapped in its cage, we’re going to feel violated.
The speaker gets this idea across to us by depicting the bird as physically violated and in a violent reality. The bird beats “his wing” against the bars of the cage until “its blood is red on the cruel bars. ” Ouch-the image of blood here gives us a sense of how the bird’s struggle for freedom is a struggle that’s defined by violence and suffering. The “old, old scars” that are described in this line give us a sense f the bird’s suffering. He’s been beating his wings so much trying to get free that he’s scarred himself.
The speaker’s description of the scars pulsing “again with a keener sting” also give us a sense of renewed violence. When we aren’t free, we suffer again and again. Here, again, the speaker makes a reference to the violence that the bird suffers: “his wing is bruised and his bosom sore. ” This bird is really beat up. Can’t someone just let it out of its cage already? The recurring images of wounding in the poem give us a sense of just how much this bird are suffering as a result of not being free. Birds singing- how lovely. Hang on a minute, though.
When a bird sings, we might think that it’s all happy and joyful. The speaker reverses our expectations in this poem, he tells us that this little caged bird is singing not because it’s happy, but because it’s sad. Singing, in other words, is an expression of sadness and suffering in “Sympathy”-bad times, indeed. When the speaker tells us that he knows why the caged bird sings, he suggests that the bird is singing because it’s unhappy. After all, in the previous couple of stanzas, he’s painted a pretty grim picture of the bird’s ife trapped in its cage.
In Lines 18-20, the speaker tells us explicitly that the bird’s song isn’t “a carol of joy or glee. ” In other words, this isn’t a happy song. It’s a sad song. In fact, it’s not really a song at all. The speaker tells us in lines 19 and 20 that it’s a “prayer” and a “plea. ” A plea for what? Why, for freedom, of course. This bird really wants to leave that cage. We find loads of nature imagery in “Sympathy”-it is about a bird, after all. The natural imagery in “Sympathy” works to give us a sense of all that the poor caged birdie is excluded from.
The eautiful natural landscape contrasts with the bird’s cramped cage, and this helps us understand just how much oppression the bird suffers from. We might not normally think of it this way, but a bird being stuck in a cage is kind of like us being stuck in a prison cell. Sure, those birds look so cute perching on their little swings in a cage. But the fact of the matter is, birds aren’t meant to be stuck in cages, just as we’re not meant to be stuck in prison cells. This confinement is the source of the bird’s suffering in the poem. And boy, is suffering front and center in “Sympathy. “
