In the poem “Sympathy” the speaker uses literary devices to help illustrate the theme of the poem. He utilizes allegory to get his main point across as he compares the oppression of his race to the scene of a captured bird. The speaker also uses poetic devices such as Assonance, alliteration, and cacophony in the poem to create a powerful message and bring emphasis to certain points and phrases. In the poem “Sympathy” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar the speaker utilizes literary and poetic devices such as allusion, cacophony, alliteration, and assonance to bring forth his powerful message of oppression and the intense longing for freedom.
The speaker uses the literary device of allegory as a large part of his poems message. He uses allegory to compare
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his people’s oppression to the caging of a bird. The bird sings and continues its life, but it is confined inside its steel cage. The speaker compares this bird’s struggle to the struggle of people. They may walk normal, act normal, and maybe even sing or appear happy, but in reality they are stuck inside the cage that society has forced upon them. Their songs are not “of joy or glee But a prayer that he sends.” The speaker is trapped in his cage of injustice and oppression; he sings not out of joy but of desperation. There’s nothing else he can do, but sing a prayer for deliverance and hope. The speaker also uses alliteration, cacophony, and assonance to make his message clear. The speaker uses sound throughout the poem to emphasize certain words or phrases that highlight his message.
He uses the sound to create a powerful flowing piece and also to break the rhythm and call attention to specific parts. For instance when speaking of freedom he uses assonance to create a smooth flowing phrase “When the first bird sings.” The similarities in the sounds of the vowel allow the reader to breeze over the line and it gives them a light happy tone. He also uses similar sounds when describing the bird’s desperation to escape. He repeats the B sound in the phrase of “the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars.” This phrase lacks the smoothness that the phrase describing freedom exhibited; it creates a much darker feeling, and the constant repetition of the heavy B sound causes the phrase to catch the reader’s attention. This leads to the speaker’s use of cacophony. He uses this method to break up the sound phrases and bring specific attention to words that bring to light his message. In his powerful language such as “keener,” “beats,” and “flings” he really add depth to the piece and create a true passion in the message being sent. He breaks up the sound with these words and really draws attention to
them. In the poem “Sympathy” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar the speaker utilizes literary and poetic devices such as allusion, cacophony, alliteration, and assonance to bring forth his powerful message of oppression and the intense longing for freedom. His passionate language brings power to the poem and his use of sound devices allows the reader to fully appreciate his wording. His use of allegory to compare a familiar scene, like the caged bird, to real issues such as social injustice and racism in the world today makes his message take on a new perspective. He like the bird is trapped in a cage and cannot be free despite his best and most desperate efforts. The caged bird sings out of desperation and hope for freedom; the speaker likens this desperation to his own struggle making it real for the reader.
It shows that similes have to be compared universally so everyone can understand. This poem is a really funny read and I
8. The personification in the second stanza is also a metaphor. A metaphor compares two unlike things by saying one thing is another
The poem opens upon comparisons, with lines 3 through 8 reading, “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets/ of their branches. The maples/ were colored like apples,/part orange and red, part green./ The elms, already transparent trees,/ seemed swaying vases full of sky.” The narrator’s surroundings in this poem illustrate him; and the similes suggest that he is not himself, and instead he acts like others. Just as the maples are colored like apples, he
In this poem called “Creatures” by the author Billy Collins there is a literary device called a metaphor when the reader is reading this poem. A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things without using the words like or as. In lines one (1) through...
These poems represent the idea of allusion by symbolizing the need for poetry. For example in sentence 9 of Introduction to Poetry he uses allusion to demonstrate there is a dream or accomplishment he wants to do with "his students". In sentences 16-19 of Trouble with poetry, he also uses allusion because it looks like he has an idea in mind and has plans set ahead.
The use of diction throughout the poem aids the author in displaying the idea that
Angelou once again explains this concept by saying, “his wings are clipped and his feet are tied/so he opens his throat to sing,” (28-29). The only thing a bird can do when it is physically and emotionally fettered is sing. This song is meant to be a cry, but is often believed to be mimicking the joyous sound from when it was free. Additionally, Dunbar explains what the song truly means. “It is not a carol of joy or glee/But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core/But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings,” (18-20). The bird is an important symbol here because it is considered to be a boundless spirit. Nevertheless, the fact that it has been repressed to such a point that all it can do is sing proves how desperate its situation is. Ultimately, the caged bird cries for emancipation, but is ignored.
The author of the poem relies a multiple combination of uses of figurative language including using alliteration, assonance, and usage of parallel structure. Alliteration was presented multiple times through the poem, with the usage of musical rhythm and the flow of the overall writing. The usage of alliteration made every stanza stand out to create a flow with reading the poem. The first type of alliteration that is present in the poem is the repeated sounds in the beginning
The effect that the literary device makes on the poem is that it makes it seem as if the narrator is mad talking to a bird and also it uses pathos when he says “leave my loneliness unbroken!” he doesn’t want help from anyone he divested because of the girl he loved died. The rhyme scheme and repetition are to affect the reader by making it more interesting and so they would understand what he what’s when he repeats the words over and over again.
Many poets use different literary devices in poems to express their ideas and thoughts in an artistic way.
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
To continue, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Maya Angelou, and Alicia Keys have utilized various forms of literary devices in their works to fully explain and emphasize their main theme and opinions. For example, in Dunbar’s poem, ‘Sympathy,’ there is a strong use of metaphors, which is a phrase or word that represents another object or idea that it would not normally be related to. In the poem, the author uses a caged bird to somewhat symbolize racially oppressed African Americans in the 1800s. The poem includes, “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me…” “When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core…” By using the symbol of the caged bird in the poem, the author
In this poem, Maya Angelou was able to express one particular poetic device which i was able to identify throughout the poem. Her use of metaphor was mentioned quite often in the poem. When Angelou said
In the poem "Sympathy," Paul Laurence Dunbar describes how he knows "what the caged bird feels." In the first stanza, the main idea is longing, with the speaker introducing readers to a beautiful, almost magical landscape, describing the "bright" sun, wind stirring "through the springing grass," river flowing "like a stream of glass," etc. By using sensory details to create such bold imagery, the reader is enchanted by the setting. However, it's assumed that because the bird is caged, it's retained from all this beauty and freedom. This creates a mood with a sense of loss and longing for all that freedom has to offer, because if the bird were free, it'd be able to enjoy these wonders like all other birds. Furthermore, it begins to create the sense of sympathy we feel for the bird, which could relate to sympathy for African-Americans during this time. Dunbar was the son of slaves, and
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...