dunbars sympathty

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the black population was enslaved and tortured by whites. African Americans were treated as animals, denied the right to life, forced to work endlessly, and suffer abuse from their masters. White Americans forced the blacks to become slaves due to the fact that whites possessed all of the power and wealth in that time. Dunbar’s “Sympathy” suggests to the reader a comparison between the lifestyle of a …

…strong, and helped keep the ties among slaves strong. Dunbar’s “Sympathy” evokes compassion in the reading by comparing the image of a caged bird to the trapped life of a slave. Generations of slaves never had the opportunity to taste the freedoms of America. The reader finishes the poem feeling a great sense of sympathy towards the delicate birds, however, the bird is indeed the perfect comparison to the life of an African slave.