Sympathy

The cage in the poem represents racial oppression. In the first stanza, the cage prevents the bird from living in its natural habitat, which Dunbar makes concrete through descriptions of what it is like outside the cage. The world outside the cage represents the bird’s inherent right to freedom. In the second stanza, the bird wounds itself by crashing against the bars of the cage and finally relents by going back to its static perch. The bars and perch represent the limited opportunities available to Black Americans as a result of racial oppression. The crashing against the bars is the equivalent of directly opposing racial oppression. The bird’s inability to leave the cage is symbolic of the inability of Black Americans to overcome the overwhelming system of racial oppression in the United States.

The bird is a figure for Black Americans who live under a racist system. The bird’s ability to see its natural habitat is representative of Black Americans’ keen awareness of what they lose because of racial oppression. The birds outside the cage represent Americans—white Americans, specifically—who have the full benefits of citizenship because of their race. The fact that there is a bird in the cage and birds outside the cage underscores that only oppression makes Black Americans so different from white Americans.