In A Sentimental Journey, the caged starling represents the evils of slavery and incarceration. Yorick encounters the starling shortly after learning that the French police are after him for traveling without a passport. At first, he minimizes the danger he’s in, thinking to himself that prison is just “a house you can’t get out of.” But when he encounters the caged starling, which regularly repeats the phrase, “I can’t get out,” the true evils of captivity strike Yorick: he is reminded of “the millions of my fellow creatures born to no inheritance but slavery” and imagines the suffering of an individual captive. The starling inspires Yorick to get a passport and save himself from incarceration. That is not the end of the starling’s story, however. Yorick’s servant, La Fleur, buys the starling for him, and Yorick brings it back to England, where he gives it as a gift to Lord A, who gives it to Lord B, and so on. Yorick ends up putting a starling on his family crest of arms, but neither he nor any of its subsequent owners free the bird. The starling’s permanent captivity and passage from owner to owner suggests that while people like Yorick may care about slavery or incarceration when it affects them directly, they stop caring about such evils as soon as they are personally safe.
Starling Quotes in A Sentimental Journey
The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue she overlooks them[.]
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still slavery! said I—still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.
I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me.—
—I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then look’d through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.
Starling Symbol Timeline in A Sentimental Journey
