Preview

Website Analysis: Harlem Shadows By J. Mckay

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
240 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Website Analysis: Harlem Shadows By J. Mckay
This web site gives the poem called “Harlem Shadows”. It gives the reasoning of why he wrote this poem. It explains how he lived in poverty and life was not the easiest in America. McKay says how a girl made an action to receive money to help herself and her family. It also explains how America was not fair to the African Americans especially to the ones who were poor. It also blames all of the cruel things that happen in the world that drive people to the lowest point to do anything.
This article is credible because it was published on April 21, 2011. This was created less 10 years ago which implies that it does not have old information that was irrelevant. The website is designed and is very organized for the reader to get the most information

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes was considered one of the principal and prominent voices of Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s and 1930s. His poetry encompasses heterogeneity of subject matters and motifs concerning working African-Americans who were excluded and deprived of power. His choice of theme was accentuated and manifested through the convergence of African-American vernacular and blues forms. My attempt is to analyze the implications of the most significant poems by first introducing the author, examining the relevance of the poems and then, contrast them with Richard Wright’s antagonistic perspective.…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This poem expresses the general emotion of African Americans during the early 1900's. America has known as the land of opportunity, where dreams come true. However, for African Americans during this time, this was not the case. While technically free, racism, poverty, and social injustices abound, making it difficult if not impossible to actually achieve these dreams...thus, their dreams have been "deferred". This poem addresses that frustration, and ponders possible reactions from having your opportunities robbed. Do you give up? Do you become angry? Do you become complacent? To me, the last line is very powerful, because it refers to the fact that people can only be held down so long before they revolt, or "explode". In the Poem Harlem by…

    • 208 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claude McKay was Jamaican American who moved from Jamaica to the United States in 1912. He attended the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. This is where he received his first taste of racism here in America and this would have a drastic effect on his future writing. He left the Tuskegee Institute to attend school in Manhattan, Kansas. Mr. McKay then moved to New York invested in a restaurant and got married. The restaurant fell through and McKay moved back to Jamaica. He later became an editor of the Liberator and wrote some of his own poems during the time period known as the red summer. One of his poems he wrote in protest of the harsh times would later be used by Winston Churchill during World War II to motivate the soldiers. (Modern American Poetry, 2011)…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    From my research, I’ve gathered that the poem “America” was written by one of the most influential poets of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a golden age in African American culture. The personification used in this poem indicates how Mckay feels about America during the century by giving it human traits. He uses America as a woman to make it more relatable and gives the country mother traits. As a source says “... he is creating the image of America being a mother, feeding him “bread of bitterness.””…

    • 257 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes (1902- 1967), an American poet during the Civil Rights Movement, constructed the somber short poem to reflect what it was like to be a black American in the 1950s. “Harlem (Dreams Deferred)”, written in 1951, expresses the barriers of the black community and their adversities fighting for equality of an era of oppression. Under the pressure of a judgmental society, Hughes reflects the limitations that once haunted them during Jim Crowism post Harlem Renaissance (A&E, biography). With the use of figurative language and symbolism, Hughes successfully conveys a negative connotation of black oppression of the 20th century.…

    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Many immigrants to the United States also struggle with finding and keeping a balance of the uniqueness of their native culture while also adopting some practices of the culture of their new country. This was especially true of Claude McKay, a Jamaican born writer most known for his contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. McKay strongly identified with African Americans, but wanted an American identity all at the same time. In addition to these inner struggles, American racial attitudes of the time also had a major impact on McKay, specifically the country’s opinions toward African Americans. Overall, McKay’s assimilation into American culture was heavily affected by his race. Although McKay participated actively in the Harlem Renaissance, he never saw himself as anything more than a Caribbean…

    • 1535 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    This short poem is one of Hughes’s most famous works; it is likely the most common Langston Hughes poem taught in American schools. Hughes wrote "Harlem" in 1951, and it addresses one of his most common themes like the limitations of the American Dream for African Americans. The poem has eleven short lines in four stanzas, and all but one line are questions.In the early 1950s, America was still racially segregated. African Americans were saddled with the legacy of slavery, which essentially rendered them second-class citizens in the eyes of the law, particularly in the South.Hughes was intimately aware of the challenges he faced as a black man in America, and the tone of his work reflects his complicated experience. He can come across as sympathetic, enraged, and hopeful. Hughes titled this poem “Harlem” after the New York neighborhood that became the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major creative explosion in music, literature, and art that occurred during the 1910s and 1920s. Many African American families saw Harlem as a sanctuary from the frequent discrimination they faced in other parts of the country. Unfortunately, Harlem’s glamour faded at the beginning of the 1930s when the Great Depression set in that left many of the African American families who had flourished in Harlem…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Harlem Renaissance was a huge cultural movement for the culture of African Americans. Embracing the various aspects of art, many sought to envision what linked black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other. Langston Hughes was one of the many founders of such a cultural movement. Hughes was very unique when it came to his use of jazz rhythms and dialect in portraying the life of urban blacks through his poetry, stories, and plays. By examining 2 poems by Langston Hughes, this essay will demonstrate how he criticized racism in Harlem, New York.…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Harlem Renaissance is known for many unique objectives, but one of the most important objectives that it was well known for is how many wonderful artists’ and writers came about during that time period. One of the most famous writers or what many consider a “prolific and versatile writer” (Beckman 65) was Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and play writer whose African-American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s” (“Langston Hughes Bio.”). Hughes was born February 1, 1902, In Joplin Missouri and sadly died May 22, 1967. During his time he first started off writing about ordinary African Americans. He was said to be a “Major creative force in the Harlem Renaissance”…

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I Too - Essay

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Langston Hughes wrote this poem because he thinks that black people are getting treated badly by white people. White people use blacks as a resource, and not as an equal member of the USA. Langston Hughes wants to remind the white population in America, that he is an American to, and therefore should be treated as one. This we see in the first line of the poem: “I, too, sing America.” What he means here is that even though he is black, he still speaks and sings American, and therefore also is an American. He two should have the rights to say and do what he wants. That I think is the voice in this poem. He reminds people that it is not the color of someone’s skin which does the person; it is the person who does the person.…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Beta

    • 285 Words
    • 1 Page

    “Harlem” is a sad poem. The way the poem states what happens to a dream which has been given up. it says that once a dream is given up that people forget about their dream and it is never pursued ever again. Words such as, explode, rotten, and sore give negative feelings. It says that the dream starts to die because there is no drive to pursue it.…

    • 285 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory 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

    Claude Mckay

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The poem "America" was doubtlessly influenced by McKay's interest in Communism (AAP, 2006). The beginning of the poem portrays America as a cruel mistress; a "cultured hell" (line 4) that he loves nonetheless. This is most likely due to the way America treated his race was treated at that time. At the same time, however, McKay foresees America's downfall, "her might and granite wonders…sinking in the sand" (lines 12-14).…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Harlem Renaissance was an iconic movement of the nineteenth century. It was a social and intellectual eruption that was located in Harlem, New York. Legends such as Duke Ellington, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, and many more, all originated from this extraordinary movement. Claude McKay is one of the most legendary authors that contributed the Harlem Renaissance. McKay wrote many iconic pieces. To name a few, he wrote poems titled, “If We Must Die”, “Harlem Shadows”, and “America”. By doing the impossible and being heard when he could not speak, Claude McKay has used his voice for social justice and has changed the world for the better.…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The 1920s were a period of great economic prosperity, especially for white middle and upper-class citizens, and thus few people knew of the simple and less-prosperous lifestyles of many African Americans. Langston Hughes sought to change this, and with this poem created awareness to the simple and impoverished lifestyles of many African Americans at the time. He writes, “In the Quarter of the Negroes / Where the doors are doors of paper / Dust of dingy atoms / Blows a scratchy sound,” (1-4). In these 4 lines Hughes paints a powerful picture of what many African Americans have to live with at the time.…

    • 1536 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays