I have
always been drawn to poetry. My grandmother and mother used to read it to me,
my siblings, and my cousins when we were young. We had a large volume of
collected poems for children that belonged to my great grandmother. During the
years I homeschooled several of my children, I would have them choose a poem
each week to memorize. I loved reading poems and writing poetry for English
classes in high school and my first college career so much that I would write
it at home just for fun (and sometimes in Algebra and when we had a substitute
teacher in science classes). In studying the literature of the Harlem
Renaissance, I almost wish there were more poems and fewer essays. Although the
latter are interesting and usually thought provoking, they aren’t nearly as
much fun to delve into and explore. Choosing a poet for this assignment was
quite a task and I changed my mind several times. Choosing two poems to compare
was a job as well and one of them changed. I ended up with two poems by Claude
McKay I particularly like: “If We Must Die” and “When Dawn Comes to the City.” Even
though, at first glance the two poems seem to have nothing in common, they are connected
as "When Dawn Comes to the City" represents both the ills of society
as well as an expression of hope for how things should be and "If We Must
Die" is a clarion call to action to bring us from the first scenario of
“Dawn” to the second.
Let us begin
with “If We Must Die” (Lewis 290). The narrator of this poem is someone who has
experience fighting with a minority against a majority. Many people, knowing
that the poem was written during the Red Summer of 1919, believe that it deals
with the fight of black Americans against mainstream white America
“The World War had
ended. But its end was a signal for the outbreak of little wars between labor
and capital and, like a plague breaking out in sore places, between colored
folk and white.
“Our Negro
newspapers were morbid, full of details of clashes between colored and white,
murderous shootings and hangings. Traveling from city to city and unable to
gauge the attitude and temper of each one, we Negro railroad men were nervous.
We were less light-hearted. We did not separate from one another gaily to spend
ourselves in speakeasies and gambling joints. We stuck together, some of us
armed, going from the railroad station to our quarters. We stayed in our
quarters all through the dreary ominous nights, for we never knew what was
going to happen.
“It was during
those days that the sonnet, ‘If We Must Die,’ exploded out of me” (McKay).
McKay also said that, “I never
regarded myself as a ‘Negro’ poet. I have always felt that my gift of song was
something bigger than the narrow limits of any people and its problems” (Young
207).
While obviously written in response
to the prejudice McKay witnessed and experienced, it is a poem that transcends,
as McKay put it, “narrow limits” of one people. It embodies the fight of any
oppressed people against the oppressor (“Claude McKay”). In fact, it is well
known that during World War II, Sir Winston Churchill used it before the House
of Commons (Young 206). Also, a Jewish friend of McKay’s said in 1939 that the
poem “must have been written about the European Jews persecuted by Hitler”
(Jason 2409). In 1944, the test of the poem was found on the “body of a young
white American soldier who had been killed in action” (Young 211).
The narrator has fought the fight
and is encouraging his “kinsmen” to meet the enemy. In spite of the fact that
they are outnumbered and backed against a wall, it is time to fight back
honorably against the “monsters.”
In form, the poem is a typical English
or Shakespearean sonnet in that it has four stanzas and the rhyme scheme: ababcdcdefefgg.
Although typical in form, the subject matter is not. The sonnet originated in
Italy in the 14th century and was primarily used to express love. By
the 16th century, use of the sonnet had spread to Spain, France, and
England and even to Germany in the 17th. The subject matter of early
sonnets was most characteristically the “torments of sexual love.” From there,
John Donne expanded the range of subject matter to religion and Milton to
politics (Baldick). McKay’s use of the sonnet makes sense in a couple of ways.
First, having been born and raised in Jamaica, it shouldn’t be too surprising
that he was most familiar with English poets who used sonnets extensively. Second,
using a well-known form can be very effective in expressing a more
objectionable opinion or subject. McKay often used sonnets in order to bring to
light some of the less pleasing aspects of life which he witnessed.
In the first line, McKay uses “hogs.”
Why? If we search the Encarta Dictionary: English, we find the following
definitions: “1. pig a full-grown
domestic pig, especially a castrated male pig; 2. Member of pig family any animal of the pig family, including both
domesticated and wild species . . . 4. Offensive
term an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody’s appetite,
consideration for others, tidiness, or cleanliness.” To some, it brings to mind
any animal raised for food. Those raising them may become attached to the
individual animals, but in the end, if the supper table is the desired
destination, that is where the hog, chicken, turkey, etc., will end up. In this
case, however, it seems likely that McKay was using the word to represent
blacks in an offensive way as that is often how those who are not black see
them. It is an unfortunate truth that many people, as part of a larger whole,
do see members of a ‘lesser’ minority in such a light.
Anyone who has witnessed the way a
pack of dogs behaves can relate to the third and fourth lines. One afternoon
upon returning home, I noticed odd movement in our goat pen. Some neighborhood
dogs (our neighborhood being a string of farms along a dirt road) had formed a
pack and descended upon our goats. One kid was dead. One doe, though alive, had
entrails hanging out of gnawed upon belly. The dogs did seem to be mocking and,
going back to the second line, it was most certainly “inglorious.”
In the second stanza, the stage
shifts a bit. “If we must die,” let it be noble, let it be, if not exactly like
the wars of medieval Europe and England where aristocracy led the fight, let it
at least have a moral base. Let the spillage of “precious blood” not be “in
vain” so that the oppressor must even honor those who have fought.
There is something of a continuation
but also an increase of intensity. First, it was, “If we must die, let it not
be like hogs,” then it was, “if we must die. . . let us nobly die.” Now, “let’s
meet the common foe.” Not just meet them but for every thousand blows they deal
us, we will reward them one “deathblow!”
Finally the couplet serves to end
the poem as it would in any sonnet but rather than brings everything together,
it rather finishes off the last six lines with a “finishing kick” (Young 220).
Now, we will take a look at “When
Dawn Comes to the City” (Lewis 293) altogether a different poem published in
1922 ("Harlem Renaissance 2005.”). This narrator is homesick. Currently
living in New York
McKay uses personification to
describe the cars in the city. In the first stanza, they are “tired,” and “go
grumbling.” They are “moaning” and “groaning”. These poor cars are in pain, in
misery. They aren’t just tired, they are letting everyone who has ears with
which to hear know that they are. The words themselves lend a feeling of
moaning and groaning which add to their grumbling state of being tired.
In the third, they are still
“tired” but now they are “crazy” and “lazy” and now there are milk carts
“rumbling.” One may wonder about those crazy cars. Are they affected by a
mental disorder or are they somewhat lacking in judgment? In the second and
fourth stanzas, which are identical, onomatopoeia is used in describing the
sounds the various animals make. The fact that each sound is mentioned three
times, with the exception of the hens cackling, rather causes one to think that
there is noise all around (and, in the case of the hens, they cackle and cluck
all day long anyway), which is indeed the case when you live on or near a farm
or a more rural area where such animals might be found ("Harlem Renaissance
and Civil Rights Movement”).
Returning to the first and third
stanzas, in the first, the speaker compares the tenements to cold stone. “Dark
figures” come out of these and “sadly shuffle” to work. Even the stars are
“dull.” In the third, a single “lonely newsboy hurries by” and the stars are
now “dying.” This might lead one to believe that the speaker is not only in New York , but in Harlem
where there would be an abundance of “dark figures” who would be going to work.
It is a cold and dreary place and even the rhyme scheme in these stanzas,
ababcdcd, and the lulling rhythm add to the everyday dullness of life there
("Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Movement”).
Contrast this with the second and
fourth stanzas where all these animals are making noise as the day breaks. No
tired or dying stars here. It might not be fully light, but the sense of
hopelessness is not present. Water in a stream falls “joyously!” to rocks
below. The city does not seem to care that the speaker is there but the island
does. The Nanny calling might want her morning grain. Perhaps she wants to be
milked; maybe that is the desire of the “tethered cow” as well. Whether these
animals would be cared for by the speaker were he there, the island is
certainly calling to him as he longs to be there away from the demoralizing
effects of the city (Brooks). The shape, even, of these identical stanzas
brings to mind an island with a flowing shoreline:
But I would be on the island of the
sea,
In the heart of the island of the sea,
Where the cocks are crowing, crowing,
crowing,
And the hens are cackling in the rose-apple
tree,
Where the old
draft-horse is neighing, neighing, neighing
Out on the brown dew-silvered lawn,
And the tethered cow is lowing, lowing,
lowing,
And dear old
Ned is braying, braying, braying,
And the
shaggy Nannie goat is calling, calling, calling
From her little trampled corner of the long
wide lea
That
stretches to the waters of the hill-stream falling
Sheer upon the flat rocks joyously!There, oh there! on the island of the sea,
There I would be at dawn. (Lewis 293)
Two very
different poems. How, then, are they connected? McKay was a native of Jamaica Jamaica ,
Kingstown United States Harlem . He had grown up reading Byron, Shelly, Keats,
late Victorian and Romantic authors. Among his friends were white Americans
living in the suburbs of New York and in Greenwich Village . At a time when most Harlem Renaissance
writers were young, in their 20’s, he was older than most of them. Also, during
most of the Renaissance years, McKay lived in Europe .
So, while accepted by those in Harlem, he was also something of “a misfit at a
time when blackness was being celebrated” (Young).
The connection partly lies in
McKay’s life. As a black man, a member of a minority in many places, he
experienced things that should be fought against. These experiences happened
not only in his homeland, but in his adopted homeland. Social injustice should
be fought wherever it takes place. His desire to fight back, not only himself
for himself, but others for everyone is evident in “If We Must Die.” In “When
Dawn Comes to the City,” McKay, as the speaker of the poem, is accepted by
society in the city, but longs for the tranquility of the life he knew on the
“island in the sea.” Most writers are comfortable and most believable when
writing about things with which they are familiar. Both poems speak of what the
speaker knows and what he hopes or wishes for. He knows the effects of
prejudice and racism and he knows the quiet, peaceful pastoral life of the
island. He wishes for people to fight against injustice and wishes for the island
life he once knew.
Going one step further, we might
say that “If We Must Die” is the call to action against all things bad, against
all of the many injustices found in the world. “When Dawn Comes to the City”
represents all the squalor and prejudices of life but also the hope for a
better world for if all the animals, being very different from one another, can
live in peace, so ought we, as human beings with only the difference of an
outer appearance, to be able to.
Works
Cited:
Baldick, Chris. "About the Sonnet." About
the Sonnet. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2012. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/sonnet.htm>.
Brooks, George. "Pastoral Realist: Complexity
And Contradiction In." Worlditonline. IRWLE, Jan. 2009. Web. 6 Nov.
2012. <http://worldlitonline.net/2009-jan/art7.pdf>.
"Claude McKay." The
Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2012.
"Harlem Renaissance 2005.” When Dawn Comes To
The City. N.p., 1 Dec. 2005. Web. 06 Nov. 2012.
"Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights
Movement.” When Dawn Comes to the City. N.p., 25 Apr. 2008. Web. 06 Nov. 2012.
Jason, Philip K., ed. Critical Survey of Poetry.
Second Revised Edition. Vol. 4. Hackensack, NJ. Salem Press, Inc. 2003. Print.
2409.
Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem
Renaissance Reader. New York
McKay on "If We Must Die"" McKay on "If We Must
Die" N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2012.
Young, Robyn V., ed. Poetry Criticism. Vol.
2. Washington , D.C.
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