Lawrence Dunbar Sympathy

“Sympathy”
To sympathize, according to Webster’s Dictionary, means “to feel sorry for someone who is in a bad situation.” “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar expresses the pain of the soul’s desire to be freed from bondage through a caged bird. For instance, in lines 18-20 of the poem, Dunbar states, “It is not a carol of joy or glee/ But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core/But a prayer that upward to Heaven he flings—.” In these lines of the poem, Dunbar is portraying a bird in a cage who longs to be free. The repetition of “I know what/why…” throughout the poem emphasizes the connection between the writer and the bird. In my opinion, the writer is not free. He is struggling with internal conflicts as well as the bird. He is craving
that taste for freedom too, but is yet to find it. Perhaps the “caged bird” isn’t even a bird. Perhaps it is just a representation of how the writer truly feels: trapped, oppressed, enslaved to himself or something. Perhaps the bird’s red blood on the cruel bars of the cage, as recited in line 9, is his own, and it’s him trying to break free.