Have you ever felt helpless? Have you ever been in an awful situation that you couldn’t do anything about? Have you ever been desperate enough to plead and beg? Or did you look on the bright side and try to stay as bright and cheerful as you could despite a bad situation? After going through so much pain, what would your ballad be about? In the poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Blinded Bird” by Thomas Hardy, both narrators interpret birds’ songs. The caged bird in “Sympathy” agonizingly pleads to God, whereas the bird left without sight in “The Blinded Bird” is conveyed as singing a joyful melody. Both are in painful situations, but how do they react differently?
In Dunbar’s “Sympathy,” the first stanza uses imagery to describe…show more content… Both sing very different songs. The caged bird sings a ballad, thinking of all he’s been through. A depressing song that goes on forever and prays to God to no longer have to sing this particular song. The blinded bird sings a melody, somehow mesmerizingly beautiful despite everything else. One bird is stuck thinking on its misfortune, whereas the other bird moved on. The narrators of these two poems are imposing their own emotions on the birds. The narrator of “Sympathy” is projecting how he felt to be locked up. He says that he knows the bird, but what he really knows is his own feelings. The narrator of “The Blinded Bird” is asking how the bird is acting in the way it does. He wishes that he could react in the same fashion when it comes to whatever pain he is in. Many people assume that the poems are meant to depict slavery. I must say that I don’t care what specifically the poems were meant to depict. Who cares about whether they written because of the authors’ connections to slavery? What matters to me is that the birds can be related to human emotions and how we react to bad situations. Just like the narrators, I can relate to the birds. I may not have ever been stuck in a cage or blinded with a red hot poker but I have been in tough situations. What is important about the poem isn’t why the narrators imposed their own emotions on the birds. What is important is that the birds emotions are vague enough that anyone can relate to them. Everyone has their own personal cage. I understand the caged bird and wish I knew how to be as calm as the blinded
