Literature - Research Paper Example

” For many African-Americans, America is their home, their mistress, and yet it is also a place of slavery and pain. Garvey-esque escapes to Africa or Jamaica were the province of some, but for most others, the hope was that the promise of America would, like a check marked “Insufficient Funds”, ultimately be paid them. America was both a land of freedom and a source of oppression and segregation; a land of prosperity and opportunity, and the source of their dreadful poverty; a place of great knowledge, and also of great ignorance.

Thematic elements such as Blake's tiger and the bread, a Biblical reference, ground the theme in classical Black cultural traditions such as usage of the imagery of the Bible both to represent the oppressors and liberation from the oppressors (Levine, 1978). Indeed, there is an understanding in McKay's poem that the very sources of oppression could themselves provide the seeds of liberation, the very ideologies that presently kept the Negro down being able to be deployed to make clear the necessity for and justice of their liberation.

“Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, /Giving me strength erect against her hate”. The same entity hurting him also gives him vital strength and inspiration, providing a philosophy of freedom, equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. McKay makes clear that he does not hate America, despite its oppression. “Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. / Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state, /I stand within her walls with not a shred / Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer”. By lifting revolutionary imagery, McKay reminds the reader that America was not always a counter-revolutionary actor that served to oppress, a conservative place, but was the home of rebellion.

The use of the word “bigness” implies not only sheer size and power, but also magnanimity. McKay finally offers a warning much like the warning offered by Ozymandias. “Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, /And see her might and granite wonders there, /Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand, / Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand”. McKay predicts that the days ahead will be a time of decline, a warning that if America cannot provide a dream of justice, Time will strike it down.

Thus, imagery, language, metaphor, symbolism, and references to culture makes the sonnet form that McKay uses pregnant with liberatory meaning. Langston Hughes was one of the most gifted poets of his generation and certainly stands the test of time among the great poets of any generation. Like many great poets, adversity and need shaped and channeled his writing: He was discussing poverty, racism, oppression, segregation, discrimination, dehumanization, and daily assaults on dignity and humanity, as well as hoping to provide a vision forward.

His use of language was essential to combine all these tasks. “Harlem”, one of his most seminal poems, opens, “What happens to a dream deferred?” The poem is so short that every single stanza and word deserves careful attention and commentary. Hughes is using both