Merlin has a strong desire to belong to a family or at least to a group of people, but "Everything, he thought wildly, everything conspires to keep me on my lone." Even when he finds the wodewose, outcasts like himself, he does not find a home. The moment his ability to dream of the future is discovered, he is imprisoned by the wodewose and told to serve them. He becomes a bird in a cage, and he must sing (relate his dreams) on command. The cage symbolizes his isolation, an isolation from humanity made complete by the fact that it was forced on him by people who are themselves outcasts from society. It seems that Merlin can go nowhere without being someone set apart from the rest of humanity.

His abuse at the hands of the wodewose tells Merlin more about himself than that...