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Critical Analysis Of The Theme Of 'Hope Is The Thing With Feathers'

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A Bird’s Eye View Emily Dickinson opens up her poem with the famous line, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words,’’. Paul Laurence Dunbar ends his poem with the line “I know why the caged bird sings!”. These two lines from the poets form the theme of the two poems. The poem “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson, and “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar both present a theme that suffering makes you appreciate hope much more. It seems that hope and pain are almost a dynamic duo. You cannot appreciate the good if you do not experience the bad. However in the poem “Sympathy”, by Dunbar, you can visualize the darker side of hope seeing as he gives more insight in the hurting side of hope. Both the poems use the metaphor of a bird to visualize the overall meaning of the poem. Dunbar uses his bird as a metaphor for the lack of freedom and …show more content…

Although the idea of suffering may seem more present in Sympathy, you can also see the suffering that comes with hope in Dickinson’s poem. A prime example of suffering in “Hope is the thing with feathers” can be seen in the beginning of the last stanza where Dickinson writes, “I’ve heard it in the chilliest land, and on the strangest sea”. Dickinson is referring to times where her suffering made her feel as if she was in a horrible place. The suffering could have been she was having a tough time but the hope was constant. At the end of the second stanza Dunbar explains his suffering saying, “And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting I know why he beats his wings!” This imagery creates physical scars; new ones and many old ones. This gives the idea of his suffering being reoccurring but the bird continues to beat his wings as a symbol of hope. This is also shown through Dickinson’s bird, which shows constant

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Samuel Smiles, a scottish author and governor, said, “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.” Roland Smith wrote a great short story based on the topic of hope and determination. Roland Smith wrote a short story, “The Ghost Bird”. This story is about a girl named Hannah who teams up with Mr. Tanner to find the rare ivorybills that are on Mr. Tanner’s property and never gives up on hope to find them. The author uses characters personality traits and setting to convey the theme of even in the most difficult times, never lose hope.

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In “Sympathy,” Dunbar imbues metaphors into his poem, depicting an image of what African Americans longed and fought for which is liberty and equality. According to lines 2 & 3, “When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the river stirs soft through the springing grass.” The “sun”, “wind”, and “grass” shows what they are missing. “The caged bird” represents the African- Americans at that time because both of them are longing for freedom and equality. As stated in line 11, “When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;” “The caged bird” or the African Americans yearn to be among the other birds or other people and have the same rights.

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Each stab of a swooping beak tore his flesh. (66) With this quote the reader imagines the dripping blood and the birds picking at his

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Here, as the beautiful bird was able to seemingly able to “dissolve walls away”, it symbolically portrays a glimpse of hope, as one day he might be released. In addition, when Andy was released from solitary confinement, Red approaches Andy, saying: “That there are things in this world not carved out of gray stone. That there 's a small place inside of us they can never lock away, and that place is called hope.” (351). As Red feels empathetic towards Andy, he further tries comfort Andy. Through embodying his sympathy through a piece of stone, it further implies to Andy that despite being brutally

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Throughout her poem, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –,” the speaker of the poem is dying in her deathbed surrounded by loved ones, and how she is experiencing a memory of death and how she is enduring it. As the people at the deathbed are “gathering firm” around her, they are in an understanding that she will die and are waiting for her demised (Dickinson). The “eyes” of the beloved ones were flowing of tears and crying to the dying loved one of the deathbed (Dickinson). Throughout Dickinson’s poem, no happiness is brought upon inside the poem because all that the author sees the theme of death as sadness and

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If we compare the bird’s wings to Tom Robinson’s hope, the feet to his heart, and his action of  running to the action of opening his throat to sing, we can visualize the song that Tom Robinson would sing, one about him losing hope and not wanting anyone to control his life anymore, and so in this manner he is very much like the caged bird in this poem. Similarly, Tom Robinson’s physical struggles can be compared to the caged bird in the poem “Sympathy”. In the novel it’s written “Tom

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The Tropical Bird Cage Hanging in a Condominium’s Window In the poem, “Sympathy” written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the caged bird is a metaphor that portrays the notion of injustice through many unique literary devices such as detail, diction, and imagery. Dunbar evinces a tempestuous attitude of injustice, including freedom and exploitation, as a story of a bird’s life is used as a metaphor for these two characteristics. Dunbar writes, “When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;/when the wind stirs soft through the spring grass.”

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In Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy” there is end rhyme present but no real rhyme scheme. Those are some of the rhythmic elements Dunbar uses in his writing. Dunbar writes his poems on very serious matters, such as life and dreams and identity. In his poem “We Wear the Mask” Dunbar writes about people wearing masks but the true meaning of the poem is how people will try to hide their identity to look like a better more perfect person. In his poem “Life” dunbar writes about how life is not always good and at t8imes life seems to be really bad.

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Life can really suck sometimes. It can give us the illusion that everything is going to go smoothly as planned, but then it surprises us with tragedy or rough, unexpected circumstances. It is during these times that we just don’t know what to do and feel hopeless. But hope is always there. Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes it seems impossible to find, but there is always hope for any situation or circumstance.

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The feelings of the birds and how they go about their lives is a way to show what the caged bird is longing for, but can’t have. In “Sympathy”, the author sympathizes with the bird’s feelings of being caged in rather than talking about what it would be like to be free. The title “Sympathy” is so appropriate for the poem because it really is about how the bird feels and how you can sympathize with the pain and imprisonment the bird feels. There should be no preference over one of the poems. The reason being is that both poems were great at showing that it is freedom that they want and

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Joanne Gabbin notices this, stating, “Likewise, in ‘Sympathy’ Dunbar grasps the universal cry for freedom, the inevitable theme of African American literature since black poets tried to sing in a strange land. The speaker in the poem metaphorically becomes the caged bird beating its wings against bars that do not give way” (Gabbin 228). Dunbar may also have been addressing the issue of African-American literature being used for minstrel tales and dialectic stories. Dunbar, along with other African-American poets at the time, felt trapped in the style and prose he was expected to write in, which brought focus to another aspect responsible for the style of literature known as African-American literature

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Have you ever been a place where you can not leave? You would do everything you possibly can to escape and be freed. The poem “Sympathy” is a poem about a bird who is a poem about who is trapped in a cage. As you read the poem, you begin to understand that there is a deeper meaning to the poem. When the poem was wrote in the 1800s, many African- Americans were in slavery, and the poet wanted others to know how many of them felt.

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Hope, Rage, and Sacrifice Oppression is an illness that has plagued the world for centuries. This is shown in “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou as the birds are trapped by oppression and the birds must break free from it. Maya Angelou and Paul Laurence Dunbar use the central symbols of the free bird and the caged bird to reveal the theme of oppression. The symbols of rage and hope accompany the theme oppression.

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In the same way, the two poems share the same imagery; birds being treated like slaves. Both birds are being tortured by their owners. In Sympathy, it says,

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Lines one through seven define the free bird as one that “floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays” (Angelou) this is a representation of freedom and joy. The second and third stanza lines, eight through fourteen defines the caged bird that “stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage” (Angelou) where these words reference isolation and despair compared to the freedom in stanza one. These lines create a visual response of the bird’s environments. The third stanza is repeated at the end of the poem for prominence as it reflects the two birds are so different.

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