Sympathy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1899

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Poem Analysis

Themes

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Related Poems

“We Wear the Mask” by Dunbar (1896)

“We Wear the Mask” offers a different representation of The Psychological Reality of Racism. While the bird in “Sympathy” makes its pain obvious with song, the strategy for dealing with the pain of racism in “We Wear the Mask” includes evasion and bravado. “We Wear the Mask” displays the growing sense at the end of the 19th century that appeals to goodwill and common humanity were unlikely to end racism.

“I, Too” by Langston Hughes (1926)

Written during the Harlem Renaissance (the flowering of Black poetry and art during the early 20th century), “I, Too” relies on song to represent Black aspirations. In this poem, the speaker is confined to the kitchen but manages to use the kitchen as a retreat where they grow resilient in preparation for their freedom.

“Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou (1983)

Angelou’s poem relies on the contrast between a free bird and a caged bird, but she devotes more time to the free bird and the conditions of life outside the cage. This representation shows that Black people did not just aspire to freedom; they had, in some ways, achieved it and were hungry for more.

Further Literary Resources

Lyrics of the Hearthside by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1899)

Lyrics of the Hearthside is the collection that includes “Sympathy.” The poems in the collection range from odes to Black troops in Cuba to poems in dialect that represent Black Americans through Dunbar’s version of African American Vernacular English. Many of the poems in AAVE are full of nostalgia about past times, while the poems in standardized and literary English tend to celebrate the aspirations of Black Americans.

“Intimate Intercessions in the Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar” by Joanne Gabbin (2007)

Writing in the African American Review, Gabbin argues that in his work and life, Dunbar accepted the painful burden of bridging the racial divide between Black and white Americans. This article adds context about how Dunbar both resisted and accepted limitations in order to survive as a working artist.

“‘Entirely Black Verse from Him Would Succeed’: Minstrel Realism and William Dean Howells” by Gene Jarrett (2009)

Jarrett argues that Dunbar’s white readers—including critical ones like William Dean Howells—read Dunbar’s poems in AAVE as realistic and authentic representations of Black Americans, and his poems in standardized, literary English as inauthentic. The article illuminates what was at stake in Dunbar’s choice to write poems about racism in standardized, literary English.