English Literature

The America of African-American poet Claude McKay was a growing and proven power on the world stage, while at home racial and other social tensions bubbled beneath the surface of the culture. During the 1920s, African-American poets and artists such as McKay had converged upon Harlem in New York City and had created a cultural renaissance, aptly named the Harlem Renaissance. Seeking to be representative of their own often ignored culture and of the nation as a whole, McKay and his peers challenged the status of African-Americans across the nation. In his poem America McKay presents a country that is at odds with itself. In language that succinctly represents the notion of a nation as a living and, therefore, dying entity, the American portrayed by McKay is one rife with inequality and injustice. From the beginning of the short, fourteen-line poem McKay bombards the reader with language which evokes images of violence, roiling oppositional forces of nature, and strength which is crumbling under its own hypocrisy. If America is unable to embrace all factions of itself, rather than turning away and against the various racial and social groups within its borders, it will doom itself to the deterioration of the very values by which it is defined.

McKay begins the poem America by professing an embittered love for this cultured hell that tests my youth. America is not, for those caught under the thumb of oppression, a land of opportunity. It is a beast which has the power and the prerogative to abuse and destroy the children of her land. The bread of bitterness fed to those, who like McKay, struggle with the values preached by the idealized version of democracy is a product of the realization that such values seem to be rarely realized by those they should serve. For someone like McKay, who had been raised in a culture that promoted the very American ideals while rejecting him, such things as truth and justice must have seemed a disturbing joke. While told that these ideals represent America, minorities in the early 20th century were confronted by the reality of Americas limitations. Wooed by promises of truth, justice, and freedom such dreams are sharply upended when the reality of America sinks into my throat her tigers tooth, Stealing my breath of life. In beginning the poem in this manner, through the comparison of America to a vicious, though beautiful and powerful, animal McKay attempts to show the nature of a country which promotes the rights of some while continually oppressing others. He is equally illustrating the predatory nature of the social and physical aggression of the nation against its own people, making prey of what could in reality be its strength.

The poem is taken farther into the developing metaphor of violence the vigor of the beast illustrates the power of such a foe. From this power, inherent not only in the choice of the word vigor but in the image of a tiger meeting and devouring its prey, McKay himself is able to gain strength. Such strength is derived not merely from the challenge of such abject hatred but also from a jaded love for the values of the American way of life. McKay cannot fully believe the rhetoric that espouses these ideals but at the same time he is unable to discard his love for them. However, this love is not reciprocal and is instead returned by a deeply seated racism at the heart of his birth. The challenges McKay faces as an African-American in early 20th century American society are strongly imbedded not simply in the social culture but also the political framework of the country. In confronting racism, McKay illustrates that to overcome racism is not to triumph over individuals but instead over the institutional hatred that seems to define public and governmental opinions. Such hatred is of a largesse which McKay describes as a bigness that sweeps my being like a flood. Like the image of the tiger, this hatred is powerful and ultimately destructive to that which falls in its path.

Moving away from the symbols of nature, the tiger and flood, the second half of the poem concentrates on a more historical viewpoint of political upheaval, as a rebel fronts a king in a state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. His rebellion is not against the ideals of the American dream but instead against its unequal application. McKay and others like him do not wish to rewrite the edicts of justice and truth as cornerstones to American society but instead to see them applied equally to all. By specifying that his protest is not one of terror, malice, not a word of jeer, the poet is illustrating a desire to uphold American values without discrimination. While attacking the status quo, which enforces a culture of racism and inequality, McKay does not view his literary action as akin to the violent upheavals of history. He stands beside the dream while voicing an opposition to its application. The imagery of the rebel fronting the king most closely enforces this view because it is not a confrontation that would destroy the state but rather one that will strengthen it. In recognizing the role of African Americans within the American culture, the nation itself stands to gain an ally and not a foe. McKays image is one of strength America and African Americans present equally strong aspects of cultures at odds but equally able to sustain and enrich the other.

Despite the idea that African Americans can strengthen and enrich the future of America, McKay is skeptical of the reality of this vision. His view, representative of the cultural viewpoint of African Americans, shows a belief in the inability of the American culture he knows to absorb and accept him as part of its whole. Viewing the possibilities of the future, McKay remarks, Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, exudes a pessimism that compliments the violent imagery of the first half of the poem. Rather than viewing the future as a possibility of the assimilation of the present and the future, McKay predicts a cataclysmic view of change. The might and granite wonders that indicate the strength and physical presence of a civilization built upon ideals it has yet to fully realize, particularly in concern for their own population, will fall under the pressure of their own limitations. It is evident that the might is of the same power evoked in the imagery of the tiger and flood. The granite wonders may be viewed within the context of civilization itself, not merely that of America but all of Western civilization which can be seen as historically representative of both advancement and oppression. Neither the strength nor civilization, evoked in these images, however can withstand the turning of time and the political and social changes that will inevitably occur. If America is unable to build upon its mistakes than Times unerring hand will act of its own accord. Such an unjust society cannot withstand its own hatred and culturally debilitating policies but must instead expand upon its own ideas. Without a more open understanding of itself, as integrative and reflective of not merely whites but all ethnic and social groups, the America of which McKay speaks will expedite its own demise. Instead of rising and building upon its strength, the very power and violence that has allowed the systems of inequality and racism to persist will destroy it. Within this context, not only will the negative attributes of such a society be destroyed but also the hope and beauty of the ideals of American justice and democracy. The priceless treasures McKay describes as sinking in the sand in the final line of the poem are these ideals of democracy and not their hypocritical representations.

Through McKays poem America we can glean a view of how integral but equally destructive the forces of inequality and racism are on a society. In images of nature and history, McKay shows the reader the violence and baseness inherent to such institutions as well as the hypocrisy at the root of the problem. The America McKay professes to love, is not the America in which he lives his daily life, instead it is the America that he has been taught to dream of and yearn towards. It is an unreality based upon ideals that has yet to be realized for the millions of African Americans who are an integral, though separate part of society. In continuing a tradition of hatred and hypocrisy, such a civilization cannot flourish in rejecting African Americans it was rejecting itself and its own future. In McKays view, if American society cannot desist in its predatory assault upon its own people it cannot flourish and will finally fall prey to itself.