How would you compare and contrast the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes? Paul Laurence Dunbar, author of “Sympathy,” predates...

Both poets engage with elements of nature and use those elements as metaphors to describe the black experience. Dunbar identifies with a caged bird—another being who is kept under someone's control and disallowed the freedom that is natural to it. He beats against the bars in an effort to be free, despite the pain this causes him. Furthermore, he gives the bird a gender: "he." The bird's male identity further connects this trope to the...

Both poets engage with elements of nature and use those elements as metaphors to describe the black experience. Dunbar identifies with a caged bird—another being who is kept under someone's control and disallowed the freedom that is natural to it. He beats against the bars in an effort to be free, despite the pain this causes him. Furthermore, he gives the bird a gender: "he." The bird's male identity further connects this trope to the poet and his own possible experiences, or those of other black men.

Hughes uses rivers—ancient bodies of water that continue to move out to sea—to show that the black experience is much longer and more expansive than American history would have us believe. 

The intent of both poets is to write about the black experience in unique and creative voices. While Dunbar still employs a rhyme scheme (a, b, a, a, b, c, c in the first and third stanza; a, b, a, a, b, a, a in the second) that is more reminiscent of nineteenth-century poetry, Hughes uses free verse, which is more typical of twentieth-century poetry.