A cage you can see out of is crueler than a windowless cell. In a dark, hopeless cell you turn in upon yourself and travel as far as your memory and your imagination can take you. It is possible, as Hamlet points out in Act 2, Scene 2 of his play, to be be "bounded in a nutshell and (still) count (yourself) a king of infinite space." But scenic cages--wire cages, cages formed from relentless extrusions of metal and strapping, are heartless: look but don't touch, hear and smell; but don't attain. You can create a universe in solitary. In any other kind of cage, the world eats you alive.
