LITERARY ANALYSIS

KAYJATTA

A PORTRAIT IN GEORGIA: JEAN TOOMER.

Hair—braided chestnut,
        coiled like a lyncher's rope,
Eyes—fagots,
Lips—old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breach—the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
        of black flesh after flame.

A PORTRAIT IN GEORGIA: JEAN TOOMER

This poem by Toomer is about identity and violence, racial identity and violence. It is about one race meting out violence and aggression against another. The imageries of lynching-a common form of racial violence in the South up to the 1960s and ‘70s, beating, burning, and torture are unmistakable. John Callahan (1988) referred to this poem as a description of “a white Southern obsession behind the blood sacrifice of lynching”. This is a fitting description of what Toomer sought to capture in this narrative poem, as the beautiful figure of a Southern white woman is transformed into a black victim by lynching. The imagery in this poem (A Portrait In Georgia) appears to call to attention especially the black community about the prevailing danger of daily life in the South. This fact, in consistence with Callahan’s argument, is also what psychologists might refer to as displacement of aggression. The violence inflicted on the body of the white woman is actually intended or directed to the black man. Toomer succinctly captures this in the last two lines of the poem:

         And her slim body, white as the ash

             Of black flesh after flame

George Hutchinson (1993) argued that Toomer’s poem is a “haunting evocation of the racial boundary”. As the image of the body of a beautiful white woman dissolves into the image of a lynched black man, we are reminded of the taboo of inter-racial romantic relationship (miscegenation). The lynched black man perhaps, in agreement with Hutchinson’s argument, is punished for defiling white womanhood. However, Toomer’s technique of juxtaposing or even uniting a white woman with a black man by way of lynching may speak beyond racial segregation and identity.

AMERICA: CLAUDE McKAY

America

By Claude McKay 1889–1948 Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate,

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

The Jamaican-born Claude McKay, in this poem called “America”, expresses a bitter-sweet experience with America, his adopted country.  McKay was closely followed by the FBI for a long time. In the poem he quickly laid out two conflicting emotions and attitudes towards American society, one of intense love and the other an intense hatred. The poem is obviously about love and hatred, but also about hope and somewhat a sense of loss (despair). Consequently, this poem is an illustration of duality in that it traverses two different parallel worlds of love and hate, and also hope and despair. In fact Nina Baym (2008) called it tersely as a “frustrating duality”. Phrases like cultured hell, bread of bitterness, I stand within her walls, darkly I gaze into the days ahead, and etc all points to this ambivalence about America as a country and as a society. Mckay celebrates what America provided for him (bread) but also condemns what America denied him (human rights and equality). This mixed feeling about America, as Ms. Baym argues, is the “dominant attitude portrayed by blacks” during the Jim Crow years of the 1920s. In lines 8 through 10, the narrator in the poem alludes to the confidence and brevity (… as a rebel fronts the king…). This allusion is McKay’s attempt at “perverting the perceived societal norm” of yielding (or not standing up to) authority-the injustice of racial discrimination (Baym, N. 2008). In lines 5 and 6, the narrator alludes to the hope that the emerging nation called America offers.

In this poem, McKay also draws our attention to questions of justice, law and order. Perhaps law and order is presented here as a protector of the status quo- an injustice, which Mckay’s narrator boldly confronts and stands up to. In the last line (line 14)

                              Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand

McKay expresses extreme despair about America’s future, as the great contributions many great men and women (…her might and granite wonders…, line 12), fades away in the sand.

                                                              WORKS CITED:

1.      The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 7^th Ed (2008)

2.      The African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in Twentieth –Century Black Fiction (1988).

3.      Texas Studies in Literature and Language (1993).