Preview

Poem Analysis: American By Claude Mckay

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
387 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Poem Analysis: American By Claude Mckay
Ashley M. Gonzalez
Professor Funk
ENC 1102
11 December 2017

America American written by Claude McKay is a popular poem in which it communicates its theme by using personification, metaphors, and original diction. This poem follows a very structured writing. The structure of the poem is split into two main stanzas. The first stanza explains Claude Mckay’s feelings of satisfaction and appreciation towards America. The second stanza represents a feeling of acceptance towards the readers. Claude McKay is describing his feelings toward America, despite all the battles he surpassed, nevertheless he loves his new home.
Claude McKay mentions, “although she feeds me bread of bitterness and sinks into my throats her tiger’s tooth” (Claude ) The way

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    First off, WE'RE SCREWED. It was the last presidential election of our time. The candidates were terrible. It was either World War III(Hillary) or The Purge(Trump) and I guess America chose The Purge. So, I guess it's time to say goodbye to all people of mixed or other ethnicities, because Trump's gonna make us all go back. Time to say goodbye to those we befriended and growled to love. Goodbye to all the things that actually make this country GREAT. He says, "Let's Make America Great Again," but does he really mean it. America was created as a place where people all over the world can come and make something of themselves. Now it's a place where we look down on those who are different or those of us will different talents. We judge people…

    • 144 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Even as a kid she’d lived in a puzzle world, where surfaces were like masks, where the most ordinary objects seemed fiercely alive with their own sorrows and desires”…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claude McKay was born on September 15th 1890, in the West Indian island of Jamaica. He was the youngest of eleven children. At the age of ten, he wrote a rhyme of acrostic for an elementary-school gala. He then changed his style and mixed West Indian folk songs with church hymns. At the age of seventeen he met a gentlemen named Walter Jekyll, who encouraged him to write in his native dialect. Jekyll introduced him to a new world of literature. McKay soon left Jamaica and would never return to his homeland.…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout life human beings usually find messages underneath the surface, which cannot be seen by the naked eye. In literature this is sometimes done through the use of metaphors by using specific words when relating two inanimate objects. A writer might use metaphors in order to hide these messages and not be completely obvious. In the poem "America", by Tony Hoagland, specific diction is used in metaphors in order to expose corruption in American society.…

    • 857 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claude McKay displays double consciousness from the time he comes to America. He is first an intelligent Jamaican man who has come here to America in search of an education. Here he was seen by the white Americans around him in Alabama as nothing more than just another “colored” man. Claude had to deal with both being “colored” or “Negro” and being an American. In his poem “If we must die” McKay shows the idea of double consciousness all the way through. He shows the pride of a dignified man who will not just sit back while anyone attempts to push down into the grave. His writing is not specific to one race or ethnicity, as proven when the British Prime Minister used it to motivate the British and American soldiers. (Sayre, 2012)…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The duality in this poem creates an illustration of the poet’s struggle which refers to the rising and falling of the African American culture; Johnson wonders how the world sees African American during this period as a people or things. It shows that the poet is worried about the direction the African American culture will be moving. Men or things is the comparison which is “Do they really think that African American people are worthless than white american people?” So the poet uses the word “thing” it mean that whites do not appreciate and insult African American people that they do not value as a human. It might be a question the the poet wants to ask others if it will take a long time to change their thinking or if it will take great efforts, strides, and sacrifices.…

    • 212 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poem Analysis

    • 296 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Both swallowed in their job, the janitor in “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits” by Martin Espada and the secretary in “The Secretary Chant” by Marge Piercy feel unappreciated and lost as employees. Jorge is “outside…of [Americans] understanding” and The Secretary is lost in her work and compares herself to objects such as her “hips are a desk.” The employees from these poems have become hidden behind their duties and are slowly sinking into the unknown.…

    • 296 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Western Canada and then busking on the streets of Toronto. In the mid-1960s she left for New York City and its rich folk music scene, recording her debut album in 1968 and achieving fame first as a songwriter ("Urge for Going", "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides Now", "Woodstock") and then as a singer in her own right. Finally settling in Southern California, Mitchell played a key part in the folk rock movement then sweeping the…

    • 1416 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The works of Child of the America’s by Aurora Levins Morales and What It’s Like to be a Black Girl (For Those of You Who Aren’t) by Patricia Smith was because of the direct contrast of the statements “I am whole” in Morales poem verses “…and feeling like you’re not finished” in Smith’s poem. Both statements in these poems are strong, stating a completion of a human soul and both poems are in agreement that race is a part of the completion to the human soul. Levins Morales’ poem explains what it is really like to be of mixed race in America. Smith’s poem gives a deep, more individual approach of what it is like to be a black girl. Race is a background for both poems.…

    • 1926 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the poem “Let America be America Again” by Langston Hughes, the speaker emphasizes a change that needs to be made in America. Langston Hughes brings about the problem of how America has veered from its original dream as a land for the free, now it operates being ran by oppressive powers starving the American people. He speaks to the people of America and the minorities of America in particular, to bring a change and take back what they've worked so hard and long for, our freedom.…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poetry: Poem Analysis

    • 1089 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The works we studied within Creative Writing were all helpful in creating my own works to submit to the class. Throughout all of the reading, many of the works inspired me in different ways, whether it was short story plot ideas or word usage in the poems. While crafting my work for the final portfolio, I reviewed many of the poems from our poetry packet in an effort to find inspiration and to create new interesting images. I took the most inspiration for my formal poem, which I found most difficult to write. One of the poems that was most useful to me was Jilly Dybka’s “Memphis, 1976.” Dybka’s poem follows the sestina form; I also wrote my last poem in this form, so it helped to follow the form by looking at her poem as an example. Dybka’s…

    • 1089 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Research Paper

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the poem America by Claude McKay, it deals with a man coming to U.S. society and seeing how different it is from his home country, and the troubles of different cultures, race, and class.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    America

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The poem’s title ‘America’ presents the complications of McKay as a Jamaican immigrant living in America. The poem is a sonnet written in iambic pentameter consisting of three quatrains and a concluding couplet. In the first quatrain he introduces how oppressive America is to him while simultaneously expressing how he loves it. McKay personifies America as a mother: “Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, /And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,/Stealing my breath of life, I will confess” (1-3). Mothers have a connotation of being in charge, as they are the guardians of all their children. His personification of America as a mother helps demonstrate how powerful America is and helps the reader understand the capabilities of its cruelty. The feeding of the “bread of bitterness” is used as a metaphor to demonstrate how harsh America is to McKay. If one is to imagine a tiger’s tooth being shoved in his or her throat, or perhaps one’s life force slowly being extracted, it would feel very painful and impossible to breathe. McKay also uses these as analogies to…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Early America Poem

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The poem ends: “And yet it seems to be your own hand / Which turns the volume higher?” (34-35) The poet says even tho you may acknowledge this crisis you don't want to believe, see or hear it, one wants it to go away. So one turns up the volume so you don't have to face the price of this commercial world we live in and hear the cries for help in poverty. The exclusive wealthy control almost all of the money in America. There are extremely affluent and extremely impoverished in this country. When poverty tries to reach out for fairness, the wealthy refuse to hear any complaints and simply keep shouting louder and louder that this is the way it always has been and always will be.…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ivory Spratley Ms. Lawton English III April 5, 2015 Poets and their literature play a major role in today’s society, including the poets and authors coming from places all over the world. America is filled with great poets and authors, from inspiring speeches to collections of novels. Authors from later years were very more clear and distinct with their literary works. As the famous poet and author Claude McKay says “If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.”…

    • 1583 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays