"Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar writes a poem, Sympathy, about being trapped in the world around you. This idea of being trapped both physically and through the world around you, directly relates to Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, as the character Renfield is trapped by his mental instabilities yet eventually saves the day and saves everybody around him. In Dunbar’s poem the “caged bird” is significant to the society around because the bird is trapped by the societal things, yet it is the beauty of the bird that teaches those in a society to “sing” and work hard in life. Similarly, in Stoker’s novel Renfield is trapped by the mental illness he has and because of which he is confined in the insane asylum which symbolizes that he doesn’t belong in the rest of society and that he is being trapped by society similarly to how the “caged bird” is. However, in the end of both Dunbar’s poem and Stoker’s novel both Renfield and the “caged bird” bring to pass great things. The bird “beats his bars” to be set free which causes him to sing “not a carol of joy or glee” but of desire to escape and become more than what society has made him become. Renfield, on the other hand, is similarly being confined through Seward and also through Dracula but he is able to in a sense “beat [the] bars” placed on him and attack Dracula in mist form, ultimately warning the others of Dracula’s presence and saving everybody from the horrors of Dracula. Both the bird and Renfield push the limits that society places on them, and in a lot of ways they push past those limits to what they are capable of doing, and when they do such, they often times symbolize and represent the good and powerful in everyday life.
Paul Laurence Dunbar writes a poem, Sympathy, about being trapped in the world around you. This idea of being trapped both physically and through the world around you, directly relates to Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, as the character Renfield is trapped by his mental instabilities yet eventually saves the day and saves everybody around him. In Dunbar’s poem the “caged bird” is significant to the society around because the bird is trapped by the societal things, yet it is the beauty of the bird that teaches those in a society to “sing” and work hard in life. Similarly, in Stoker’s novel Renfield is trapped by the mental illness he has and because of which he is confined in the insane asylum which symbolizes that he doesn’t belong in the rest of society and that he is being trapped by society similarly to how the “caged bird” is. However, in the end of both Dunbar’s poem and Stoker’s novel both Renfield and the “caged bird” bring to pass great things. The bird “beats his bars” to be set free which causes him to sing “not a carol of joy or glee” but of desire to escape and become more than what society has made him become. Renfield, on the other hand, is similarly being confined through Seward and also through Dracula but he is able to in a sense “beat [the] bars” placed on him and attack Dracula in mist form, ultimately warning the others of Dracula’s presence and saving everybody from the horrors of Dracula. Both the bird and Renfield push the limits that society places on them, and in a lot of ways they push past those limits to what they are capable of doing, and when they do such, they often times symbolize and represent the good and powerful in everyday life.