Interpretation Graphic Organizer: How Is Pathos Created In This Poem

In the short story Trifles, author Susan Glaspell uses metaphors and symbolism to illustrate the message that people can lose their humanity/identity/individuality when isolated and forced to suppress what they want for enormous periods of time. Because Mrs. Wright was always cooped up in her farm and housework she rarely got to see other people so one day bought a bird to keep her company and put it in a birdcage in her house. Eventually the bird was murdered by Mr. Wright and that 's when Mrs. Wright snapped. The bird was like an extension of Mrs. Wright because “She was kind of like a bird herself-- real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery. ”(page 9)

From the interpretation of the audience, Dunbar and his strong desire to be free is greatly expressed through his poem: “Sympathy” and his relationship with the caged bird who only wishes to be

The caged bird is trapped and cant get free from the bars. But with the free bird it is able to go anywhere it wants. The free bird could be considered as her and her brother because they were left as little kids at the train station to find their way to their destination. Sympathy inspired the other poem by talking about the caged bird and comparing it to the free bird. One example

According to the poem it states, “ I know why the caged bird beats his wing, Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling.” (Lines 8,9,10) This shows that the bird doesn’t want to go back to the cage because he knows that he can't escape and be free so he hurts himself, in a sense human isolation gets deranged and angry then they tend to hurt themselves because they have no way to escape isolation. Situations like this are similar to situations that happen to people that are portrayed in “ Solitary confinement is overused in our prisons” .

Birds and their action of taking flight are used to symbolize characters and their struggles. Edna lived a very isolated life where she couldn’t reach her desires very similar to a parrot “hung in a cage”(Chopin 1). The author was able to compare her life which was limited by society

The bird also symbolizes how people go too far with the amount of power they have. The bird has clipped wings, is trapped in a cage, and its feet are tied up, which means that the bird has no escape. The bird has no freedom and has no way to escape, because it cannot walk or run. Since the bird is being abused and has no power, it is traumatized and explains how its life is like a nightmare. In the text, it states, “His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream/his wings are clipped and his feet are tied” (Angelou paragraph 5).

The oppression is binding the bird to its cage while the bird hopes and prays that someone will hear him so that he can leave this maiming tyranny. In addition in “Caged Bird” the bird is singing with mighty voice that was conceived by the rage that the bird felt toward the oppression that was trapping it. The tune that the bird sings is described as, “The caged bird sings,/ with a fearful trill,/ of things unknown”(Angelou, 30-32). The bird is illustrating the anger that it felt, by fighting the tyranny that he is facing. The tyranny is holding him down and the rage that the bird feels from this pain is what the bird symbolizes.

She uses personal stories (pathos) well to pull on readers’ heart strings, as well as using word choice to portray a fearful mood. The first thing the author talks about in this essay is the conflict of whether or

According to the line, “Maybe it just sags like a heavy load”, goals that are incomplete (or dreams deferred rather) can haunt a person with remorse. Finally, the poet writes “Or does it explode?”, this rhetorical question suggests that in some severe cases, one not attaining their dream can leave collateral damage like a bomb would. Therefore, this passages depicts how great of an influence not chasing a dream can

If we compare the bird’s wings to Tom Robinson’s hope, the feet to his heart, and his action of  running to the action of opening his throat to sing, we can visualize the song that Tom Robinson would sing, one about him losing hope and not wanting anyone to control his life anymore, and so in this manner he is very much like the caged bird in this poem. Similarly, Tom Robinson’s physical struggles can be compared to the caged bird in the poem “Sympathy”. In the novel it’s written “Tom

Have you ever been a place where you can not leave? You would do everything you possibly can to escape and be freed. The poem “Sympathy” is a poem about a bird who is a poem about who is trapped in a cage. As you read the poem, you begin to understand that there is a deeper meaning to the poem. When the poem was wrote in the 1800s, many African- Americans were in slavery, and the poet wanted others to know how many of them felt.

In the same way, the two poems share the same imagery; birds being treated like slaves. Both birds are being tortured by their owners. In Sympathy, it says,

In two poems “Sympathy” written by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Caged Bird” written by Maya Angelou talk about a poor bird that is trapped in a cage and wants to be free. It longs for everything that the free bird has but it cannot achieve it. In both of the poems, there is a use of comparisons between freedom and nature. It is also interpreted from the poems that the use of a song is a form of coping for the birds. Both of the birds sing for their freedom and sing through their pain.

The last line of the poem is “for the caged bird sings for freedom” (Angelou) this tells us that the caged bird yearns to be like the free bird. Angelou uses several descriptive images for the reader to be able to envision her words: bird, winds, floats and sky for freedom because the free bird has power, as “he soars in the sky” (Angelou) and clipped wings, tied feet and cage for confinement because the caged bird is oppressed as “caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown. ”(Angelou)

In the poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, both portray captive birds that sing. However in “Sympathy”, the bird pleads with god for freedom, whereas in “Caged Bird” the captive bird calls for help from a free bird. In “Sympathy” the bird knows what freedom feels like since there was a time where the bird was once free, but now is trapped. In the first stanza the use of imagery revealed how freedom felt before the bird was caged.