Essay Questions

What effect does the repetition of commencing the first line of each stanza with assertion “I know” have on the poem?

The “I know” has two effects on interpretation. The initial effect is to personalize the poem and situate the speaker with a first-hand knowledge of the feeling of imprisonment, loss of freedom and the desire to break free of his cage. The poem thus confirmed as an expression of an individual experience, how can he also make it an example of a more universalized cultural reaction that extends beyond his own personal history? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is by doing nothing. The phrase “I know” carries the immediacy of personal experience, but the effect of repetition also transforms the meaning into that observation. The poet’s own confessional tone subtly expands in perspective to become reportage of what he has also come to know and confirm by seeing his feelings and emotions demonstrated by others.

What makes “Sympathy” an example of an extended metaphor?

The connection between the feelings of the bird in the cage and the speaker of the poem is never made explicit through a simile. The poem doesn’t say “I am like the bird in a cage” or “My experience is as a bird in a cage.” Rather than making the connection direct, the poet uses to make the connection through inference. The beginning of each stanza is an assertion of familiarity with why a caged bird sings, beats his wings and how he feels. This affinity of shared knowledge is also notably absent examples of how he knows this. For instance, he offers no demonstration from his own life that would simulate his assertion of knowing why the bird flaps his wings against the bars until it draws blood. We have no way of knowing what occurs in his life that would give him the authority to state that he can understand why the bird does this. The parallel is left to be drawn by the reader, thus making it metaphorical since there is no direct comparison to be made.

How does the imagery in the second stanza strongly suggest that this poem is specifically about the experience of slavery in the United States?

The beating of the bird’s wings until bloody resonates with images and stories of slaves being beaten and whipped. This would, of course, have also resulted in scars that become old without healing. These scars would produce both physical pain, but also create the sting of emotional pain when children and grandchildren see them and are told of the misery of slavery and its aftermath. The image of the bird—after the beating of its wings in vain—being forced to return to its perch powerfully resonates with the African-American experience from having to head back to the slave quarters after a long day’s work to having to return to segregated ghettos and areas of town in order to avoid the potentially lethal consequences of being stopped by the wrong type of white people for being in the “wrong” part of town at the “wrong” time.