Comparing Poems Sympathy And Maya Angelou's Caged Bird

The poems,”Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and”Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou were poems about slavery. Slavery is a practice of owning a slave. Each poem had its own unique feature. As for both of them, they both had a theme of slavery. Though, both poets had lived 100 years apart, their poems were similar. Their tone were both really sad. Their theme as I had said above, were also similar. The difference they had, were their rhyme scheme. Using the caged bird as a slave and the free bird as a free person, both poets had a way of expressing their knowledge of slavery.
The first similarity they had was their tone. Both their tones were sad. Dunbar’s tone was sad because as you can imagine the line,”And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars” is not a pleasant experience. It is a sad and horrible thing to go through. Maya also had a sad tone in her poem As shown in this line of the poem, which is says,”His wings are clipped and his feet are tied.” This does not sound pleasant, but rather sad. The bird is not free, but enslaved to the cage. Both poems had a lot of sadness. Their tone was not pleasant or happy. These two poems have talked about the sadness of being a slave. They were both similar in tone. …show more content…
Both of the poems have a theme of slavery. As for “Sympathy”, the poet wrote about how a caged bird is not free, and has to suffer a lot for being in a cage. This is almost like a slave. A slave is a person that does not have freedom and he has to suffer a lot because of his “cage” an owner. As for “Caged Bird”, the author said that a bird who is tied to his cage who can only sing of freedom. This is also related to being a slave. A slave is almost chained up every day. He cannot do anything, but pray for freedom. Both of these poems talk about slavery. This is why both poems have similar