Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The focus of much analysis of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy” is on the symbolism of the bird trapped in the caged and how it serves as metaphor.A bird in a cage—no matter what its song may sound like—is a creature denied the natural state of freedom. When the poet says that he knows why the caged bird sings and how it feels he is saying that he is privy to this intuition through experience. The experience of denial of the natural state of freedom is not a state of being limited to racial boundaries or the life on artist.