“America! All aboard! Next stop… the New World!” This phrase has been repeated many times throughout history to all the people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations to live with dignity and absolute freedom.
This was the case of one aspiring and adventurous immigrant, Claude McKay. Believing in the equality and freedom of the poor and backward peasantry he had left behind in Jamaica, he sought to establish a new life in the United States with a similar dream in his mind. Landing in Harlem and being at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance movement, McKay etched a name for himself as one of the most prestigious American poets through his awe-inspiring poetry. Through his experiences, McKay wrote a poem titled “America” to show his experiences in this strange and unforgiving land. This poem showed his first-hand accounts of his feelings toward this new and strange land. In conclusion, he developed a love-hate relationship with this new land and one might even argue that he saw this new land as an empire rather than a country.
This poem is divided up into a sonnet, which McKay was quite popularly known to do. He used the sonnet form generally to get his poetry across almost melodiously with a message to his readers. The tone is generally quite harsh and a bit bitter in complaints. Towards the end, the tone changes to bewilderment and even foreshadowing and predictive thinking in the new “empire” he has settled in.
The mood or tone is one of bitterness and sorrow, which is reflected in his writing. As far as the meaning of the poem, the first line basically indicates how although he has food to feed himself, he is living on meager rations. This was the case among many foreigners entering the Roman Empire who came to seek fortune yet stayed their lives in despair due to disproportionate amounts of wealth to unhealthy citizens. The second line again personifies America as “(America)… sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth” (pg 1460). This shows the cruelty and the viciousness of the brave new world that McKay has just encountered.
However, on the ironic side, he testifies in lines three and four that in doing so, this “cultured hell” (1460) gives him drive and challenge in his life. Much like the Roman Empire and new people wanting to make it big, the gladiator rings were a cultured hell that one enjoyed it much but at any moment death was near. The sheer force of American life gives him strength, he goes on to say, which stands defiantly fueling his hate. Line seven then continues to say that the mightiness of America is so grand that, like a house in a flood, he feels swept away among her force. Again in comparison to Caesarian times, Roman authority over Europe was unrivaled by even the barbarians, and the military prowess left it the only superpower. Later, McKay continues on saying, as a defiant “rebel fronts a king in the state” (1460), he respects the authority of this grand “empire” yet secretly quarrels which even in Roman times, to some extent, was allowed due to a democratic way of thinking prior to the Monarchs such as Augustus I.
The last four lines change in tone, describing the road ahead for this empire, predicting the fall is soon bound to happen despite the magnificence of “its granite wonders,” which even ancient Rome possessed (coliseums). And the last line ends with “priceless treasures sinking in the sand.” The last line is almost a predicted and eerie fact of what could happen to America if it doesn’t stay out of unnecessary conflicts and wars as it is participating in now. McKay, almost as a foreseer of the culture of this empire, had strong convincing views that the fall of this Empire was near. Eerily, the ancient Romans themselves thought of themselves to be invincible. However, a small group of tribes known as the Huns and their leader Attila wiped out the rule which gave rise to internal strife. A common saying is that history repeats itself.
The priceless treasures that are unearthed today are ancient Rome’s coliseums, its coinage, and its weapons. Who knows? Maybe in the near future, a descending civilization could unearth America’s treasures and wonder how this civilization declined. What caused its decline? Was it racial intolerance? Is capitalistic greed? Or was it imperial ambitions?
