America

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1921

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Racism and Oppression

The speaker presents America as a racist country that oppresses him because of his race. He alludes to the anti-Black racism without ever naming it explicitly. However, given McKay’s work as a whole, the “I” in the poem is autobiographical. As a Black man living in New York City, McKay knew at first hand the majority white population’s racism. So extreme is the racism that the speaker presents it as life-threatening, in the image of a tiger sinking its teeth into her victim’s throat, “Stealing my breath of life” (Line 3). The verb “stealing” shows how wrong it is; white America has no right to inflict this on its minority population, and yet it is pervasive and inevitably results in bitterness. The metaphorical “bread of bitterness” (Line 1) becomes a daily diet for those who have been wronged. It fills them up, like bread. For the speaker, then, living in America is like living in a hell.

Love and Hate

Given the oppressive images in the first three lines, the word “love” in Line 4 comes as a surprise. Despite enduring its extreme racism, the speaker loves America. His feelings are complex; love coexists with bitterness and hatred. McKay was familiar with New York City, and as he explains in Lines 5-7, what he loves about America is its irresistible, irrepressible energy, which fills him and gives him strength. In this brief celebration of America, whose “vigor flows like tides into [his] blood” (Line 5), the speaker echoes 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman, who also loved America for its vastness and huge, ever-growing potential. In McKay’s time, America was already a world power and was growing rapidly—especially cities such as New York where, amidst the teeming multitudes, new immigrants (like McKay) mingled with the native-born to seek their fortunes. Although he was acutely conscious of America’s faults and failings, McKay nonetheless surrendered to its surging energy and was bold enough to acknowledge this feeling as love.

Resolution and Equanimity

In addition to the speaker’s complex feelings of bitterness and love, Lines 8-10 introduce a new dimension. He puts love aside and acknowledges his hostility to so much of what America does. Thus, he is like a “rebel” (Line 8) within the territory of an oppressive “king” (Line 8). However, he then expresses neither anger nor fear (“not a shred / Of terror, or malice” [Lines 9-10]). Instead, he feels a calm resolution. He harbors no ill will toward America, despite what it inflicts on him. He is ready to face up to the adverse situation, unflinching, like the rebel who stares down the king. Nor will he taunt or mock his oppressor (“not a word of jeer” [Line 10]); he has moved beyond such pettiness. He therefore acquires a dignity that the racist aspect of America has sought to deny him. This is also apparent from the active verbs describing his attitudes from Line 4 onward. In the first three lines, he is a passive victim of a stronger, hostile force, but as the poem develops, he states, “I love” (Line 4), “I stand” (Line 9), and “I gaze” (Line 12), all of which convey resolution, calmness, and maturity in the face of difficulty.

Time and the Long View

The passage of time plays a large role in the poem, and indeed, it has the last word, as the speaker moves from the reality of oppression and opposition to a more long-term philosophical observation about America’s fate and perhaps that of all human civilizations. The word “Time” (Line 13) is capitalized, and this is almost certainly an allusion to Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 60,” which also capitalizes Time and which portrays it similarly—as irresistible, and as a giver and destroyer. On a more immediate level, the capitalization signifies the entity’s overriding importance, and it is also personified in the phrase “the touch of Time’s unerring hand” (Line 13). Personification is a figure of speech in which an object or abstraction is given life or human attributes—in this case, a hand and the ability to touch. By invoking the long passage of time, the speaker steps back from his immediate situation and puts it into perspective: In the end, all things pass, and such will be the fate of America, with its teeming cities and huge buildings. As he was well schooled in English literature, McKay might well have been recalling English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” (1818). Ozymandias was an ancient Egyptian ruler. In the sonnet, a desert traveler comes across a fragment of Ozymandias’s statue and the inscription on the pedestal: “My name is Ozymandias King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Lines 10-11). Nothing else is there in the expanse of desert, only the sand. Ozymandias and all he once embodied has vanished for all time. In “America,” the speaker sees the same thing happening to America, since no one can defy forever the onslaught of time.