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Paul Laurence Dunbar Sympathy

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Through Imagery and Personification, the poem “Sympathy”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, expresses the helpless rage Dunbar feels towards slavery. In the second stanza of the poem, he begins to demonstrate the mood by writing, “the caged bird beats his wing; Till the blood is red on the cruel bars,”. This Imagery describes the the helpless rage both he and the bird feel as they look out from behind the bar that confine them the opportunities described in the first stanza: The faint perfume from the flowers, the river like glass and the bright sunlight slopes. The Bird “Beats his wing” fiercely on the cruel bars trying to escape, but to no avail. Finally, in the last stanza after many hopeless tries, Dunbar describes the bird's song, “It is not a

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