Sympathy, by Paul Laurence Dunbar: A Reflection of the African America

Sympathy, by capital of Minnesota Laurence Dunbar A Reflection of the African Americans Struggle for FreedomI know what the caged bird feels, alas When the sun is bright on the highland slopes When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of ice When the first bud sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its goblet steals-- I know what the caged bird feels Sympathy was written by Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1899, right at the end of the Nineteenth Century. It is a rime ab proscribed the caged bird who wants to be free and tries, tries and tries again to break out of its cage. Each period, it is unable to break free and instead only injures itself, adding to injuries odd over from past escapes. Dunbar depicts the birds desperate and unsuccessful struggle for freedom and images of nature, that beckon outside. The first paragraph touches on the situation that opaque populate set about at the turn of the coke. Bl ack people ahd lately been freed as slaves, but there was still no racial equality. The Supreme Court had recently upheld Plessy vs. Ferguson, which allowed separate but equal. In reality, it gave the government and business license to differentiate against black people. In the 1890s, most blacks were reduced to holding poorly pay jobs, or being servants in peoples homes. They were barred from most educational and frugal opportunities enjoyed by whites. Dunbar uses the analogy of the caged bird and nature outside to the situation that black people faced in the 1890s. Blacks had been emancipated in 1863, but they did non achieve equality with white people for a nonher century. Black people did not have the same opportunities as whites... ...e caged bird sings a reasonably tune, not because it is happy with its situation, or out of a desire to transport its owner, but to alert other birds to its plight and also to try to take place depression from overcoming it. It s only lifeline was its singing. During slavery, black people often sung, not because they loved being slaves, but because they were singing escape codes to other slaves and to cite on mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, that they would one day be set free. Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote this verse to illustrate the station in life for so many African Americans. It is clear that African Americans were caged in society at the turn of the century and wanted desperately to be seen as equal to whites. However, at the time this poem was written, black people had little hope of achieving that goal. That was a cunning in the Land of the Free.