Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy”

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy”

The speaker of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy” metaphorically elucidates, through the employment of a “caged bird,” the stifling condition of a human soul locked in a human body.

Introduction with Text of “Sympathy”

Although at the literal level, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy” commits the pathetic fallacy [1], it makes a useful and accurate statement about the confinement of the human soul as it becomes aware of its stifling condition of being “caged” in a physical body.

In the fields of hard science, thinkers and researchers, who once insisted that the soul was only a religious construct or “an object of human belief” [2] are finally catching up with spiritual sages and avatars.

Spiritual adepts from time immemorial in religious scripture from the major world religions, including Hinduism [3] Christianity [4] and Islam [5], have explained that the soul, as a essential being of energy, is potentially capable of instantaneous flight to any location of its choice. The soul grapples with the slow, earth-bound limitations put on it by living in a human body under cosmic delusion.

Sympathy

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—

I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—

I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

Maya Angelou recites

Commentary on “Sympathy”

The speaker of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy” employs the metaphor of the “caged bird” to elucidate the machinations of the soul contending with a physical encasement.

First Septet: Unfortunate Knowledge

The speaker begins by employing the pathetic fallacy, asserting that he understands the feelings of a bird in a cage. He appends the interjection “Alas!”—indicating that that sensory knowledge is unfortunate.

Scientifically, the fact remains that the assertion of knowing how the caged bird feels cannot be accurate. Science cannot ascertain that avians and humans “feel” in a comparable manner. Nevertheless, poetic understanding can circumvent scientific facts, as they describe metaphorically ineffable knowledge.

Dunbar’s employment of the pathetic fallacy ascends to a level from which it has the ability to elucidate the claimed truth. Such an inference can be accepted as an appropriate comparison between a human soul incarnated in a human body and a “caged bird.”

The speaker creates a catalogue of all the beauties of nature that a bird while caged cannot enjoy: the bright sunshine, sloping hillsides, breezes through the new spring grass, streaming rivers running smooth and clear, the chirping songs of other avians, blossoms opening from buds emitting their “faint perfume.”

Obviously, the bird in a cage must stay in a limited space; a creature bestowed by its Creator with the enviable capability of flying through the air becomes confined, limiting its movements drastically.

The human heart and mind find it difficult to succumb to such limitations; thus, it seems nearly impossible to comprehend how the idea of placing bird in cage ever originated.

Still, birds in captivity do live longer [6]: they are afforded a constant and safe food supply and remain protected from predators. Nevertheless, the essence of human romanticism still craves and clings to the idea of a free ranging life for all living things.

To the very heart-core of humanity, it remains that living beings ought never become captives to other living beings. And as that captivity is observed, only the dreadful aspect of such captivity pings in the consciousness humanity.

Second Septet: Bleeding for Freedom

In the second stanza, the speaker moves on to the direct negative affects of having a bird caged up, as he laments the activities of the poor avian. This captive creature will “beat his wings” on the bars of the cage until they begin to bleed.

After beating his wings to a bloody mess, the poor injured creature can move only onto his perch in the cage; he cannot seek solace in the open branches of nature to where the bird would rather flee.

The bird again suffers the wounds of incarceration in addition to the wounds of damaged, bloody wings. The pain becomes ever more pronounced each time the bird tries to escape his confinement.

His memory of freedom may motivate him to continue to free himself, but his inability to access that freedom continues to force him to continue his attempts. By nature, he must continue his bloody struggles against confinement.

Third Septet: Singing for Freedom

The speaker now reiterates what has grown into a refrain; the human speaker knows why this caged bird continually beats his wings and bruises his breast on the hard bars of confinement. The speaker also understands why the avian sings.

The poor singing creature does not sing prompted by “joy or glee.” His song is not a carol but is instead a prayer of supplication to the Creator for deliverance from his captivity. The bird’s song is, in fact, a plea that the avian is flinging “upward to Heaven.” Yet, the speaker only implies the reason for that plea.

It should become perfectly obvious the reason that this bird is singing. He hopes that his plea, which is a prayer, will urge the heart of his sympathetic Creator to bring the creature release from his painful incarceration.

The speaker finalizes his claim, “I know why the caged bird sings!” With this repeated sentiment, the speaker wishes to make clear his understanding that the poor bird’s frustration is his own. The speaker thus is offering “Sympathy” to this poor, caged avian.

The Historical Aberration of Slavery and the Body-Caged Soul

Human history [7] is replete with despicable institutions of slavery—a people taking another people captive to procure their labor and resources in order to profit the enslavers.

The Romans [8] enslaved vast portions of the globe under the Roman Empire. Muslims [9] enslaved expansive areas of the Middle-East in their empire building era, which included the Ottoman Empire.

According to Thomas Sowell [10], Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution,

To me the most staggering thing about the long history of slavery — which encompassed the entire world and every race in it — is that nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about whether slavery was right or wrong. In the late 18th century, that question arose in Western civilization, but nowhere else. (my emphasis added)

The list of slave owning societies goes on and on, from Biblical times to the present day in some areas of the world. However, because of the relatively recent proximity to the enslavement of Africans on plantations in the United States, many history-deficient thinkers associate slavery solely with the American experience [11].

And the repercussions of that evil institution still vibrate throughout twenty-first century America.

Because the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was black, readers may find it difficult to accept that this poem can be elucidating any issue other than black life in the USA—both before and after the Civil War. That narrowly interpreted version of the poem, however, limits the poem’s profundity.

If a black individual is denied by law or custom the ability to choose and follow his own path in life, his life is then circumscribe in such as way as to liken him to a bird in a cage. That fact cannot be disputed.

However, Dunbar’s achievement with his poem “Sympathy”is so much greater than the interpretation of a black life in a cage will allow. Such a limitation may be even considered racist, as well as reductionist.

Dunbar’s “Sympathy” expresses a cosmic—not merely cultural—truth. All human souls find representation in that poem—not just the soul of black individuals. Every human soul that becomes aware of itself encased in a human body feels like that bird in a cage.

Each human soul suffers the same suffocating confinement that the bird experiences because the bird and the soul are created to be far ranging, throughout the limitless sky of life.

The human soul has been created by the Divine Creator to be an immortal, eternal entity, with the power and the ability to experience the limitless expanse of Omnipresence. The soul is meant to exist everlastingly without any bindings of flesh or mental trammels that would cage it or hem it round.

Dunbar’s “Sympathy” features a useful description of the soul lodged in a human body-cage, employing metaphorically the caged bird. The poem’s achievement deserves to be celebrated because of its omnipresent universality and not merely read through a racial, temporal prism of culture.

The Late Maya Angelou’s First Memoir

Likely the line, “I know why the caged bird sings,” will be immediately recognized by many readers as the title of the late Maya Angelou’s first memoir. Maya Angelou gives credit to Abbey Lincoln Roach [12] for titling her book; yet, they both neglect to mention the Dunbar poem, about which one would expect not only a reference but an exact quotation featuring the line.

To her credit, Angelou did acknowledge the existence of Dunbar’s poem, and she read an excerpt from it in a PBS interview [13]. Angelou also composed a piece, which she titled, “Caged Bird” [14]. Angelou’s piece sports a sing-song rime and rhythm, pleasing to the ear but lacking the spiritual profundity that Dunbar’s far-superior poem achieves.

Sources

[1] Editors. “Pathetic Fallacy.” LitCharts. Accessed May 16, 2022.

[2] Robert Lanza, M.D., “Does the Soul Exist? Evidence Says ‘Yes’.” Psychology Today. December 21, 2011.

[3] Curators. “The Soul.” Royal Path of Self-Realization. Accessed September 12, 2023

[4] Curators. “50 Bible Verses about The Soul.” The Bible: Knowing Jesus. Accessed May 16, 2022.

[5] Editors. “Soul in Islamic Philosophy.” Muslim Philosophy. Accessed September 12, 2023.

[6] John C. Mittermeier. “The Surprisingly Complex Science of Bird Longevity.” American Bird Converancy. January 29, 2021.

[7] Editors. “Slave Societies.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed September 12, 2023.

[8] Mark Cartwright. “Slavery in the Roman World.” World History Encyclopedia. November 1, 2013.

[9] Editors. “Slavery in Islam.” BBC. September 7, 2009.

[10] Thomas Sowell. “Ending Slavery.” Jewish World Review. February, 8, 2005.

[11] Curators. “The Real History of Slavery by Thomas Sowell.” Internet Archive. Accessed September 12, 2023.

[12]Editors. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, page 1.” Read From Net. Accessed September 12, 2023

[13] Curators. “Maya Angelou reads from Paul Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy”?.” PBS. Aired March 28, 2017.

[14] Maya Angelou. “Caged Bird.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed September 12, 2023.

Image: Paul Laurence Dunbar SCAD Museum of Art

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