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Reader's Response #6

Claude McKay's "America"

I thought the title was the most important part to really comprehend the poem, as the entire poem is a metaphor of "America" or being in America. The pacing of the poem was integral too, if you think about, due to America's reputation for being very busy and industrious, and fast paced (this is most evident in major cities, like New York City). The use of couplets in the form showed this pacing, and helped keep my interest as the poem went along (if certain forms had strengths, rather than just
different techniques), it would the couplet's strength).

The first four lines, I thought, were examples of the order of things in America; specifically the working class, middle class, and upper class socio-economical hierarchy (judging from McKay’s political background, this wouldn't be surprising). It made look at how the system, in many ways, invented itself, with humans in different circumstances simply being the pawns, or representations, of such a system. While that seems odd to say, the system and humans themselves helps perpetuate the system, because in so many ways it works, despite several injustices. McKay suggests that living in America, despite any racial or political injustice, gives you strength to fight back against whatever prejudice that exists. To connect to the earlier lines, it seems he suggests that while American life "steals his breath of life", this very action makes him react and eventually helps him (American life in many ways, is tough love). The injustice can be seen as feedback to a possible force that must rise up in response to this feedback, IE. the civil rights era finally erupting due not only because it was a sign of the times, but because of the era that came before it, the "Negro Literary Renaissance", which obviously helped plant the seed of a resistance to a certain system (in this case, a system of racism and discrimination).

While it may seem with great, but necessary optimism, which McKay speaks of in this poem, the ending lines provide a shift to reality that is also required. Reality is reinforcement for the importance of not only a way of life that is America, but also for the importance such a resistance is to certain aspects of American life. The last two lines, to me, reveal that such a resistance faces dark days in front of itself due to the fact that they within the walls of America (much like the almost paradox of consumers protesting the danger's of mass consumerism, yet, everyone cannot be a consumer in this country). However, with the lines of: “I stand within her walls with not a shred of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.” McKay defiantly proclaims that such resistance cannot cease to fear, hatred, or jest. Such resistance must be absolute and un-wavering, without ceasing to the very factors that perpetuates the oppositions system.