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An Analysis of Claude McKay’s “After the Winter”

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Sometimes the summer heat comes in too early and there’s the threat of tornadoes. Or even other damaging winds. The hard times are over, but we should always be careful. Nevertheless, it’s a pleasant feeling when the warmth comes in to embrace a thawed out population. In this post, we will discuss another form of thaw, in Claude McKay’s poem “After the Winter.”

Analysis of “After the Winter”

The Seasons as Hardship and Bright Futures

Poet Claude McKay writes in “After the Winter” that after the coldest season has past, the warming one takes hold.

He states, “Some day, when trees have shed their leaves / and against the morning’s white / The shivering birds beneath the eaves / Have sheltered for the light / we’ll turn our faces southward, love, Toward the summer isle.”

Yet, the deeper metaphor here is that Claude McKay is viewing hardship through a parallel to seasons. The cold winter is equal to the hard work. The warm summer stands in contrast. McKay continues in his poem: “Where bamboos spire the shafted grove / And wide-mouthed orchids smile. / And we will seek the quiet hill / Where the towers the cotton tree.”

Life comes back to us in many ways and the flowers bloom. McKay tells it us that it’s time again to remark upon the “”laughing crystal rill” and the “droning bee.” Nature returns to us and is “rill,” no doubt close to “shrill” and pronounced. With hardship and the winter behind us, we can live a new life in the warmth of the new season.

Metaphor and Symbolism in “After Winter”

Considering this, poetry guides us with metaphor and symbolism. Masters of the craft can make reality bend. Blind love becomes venomous hate, songbirds become portentous harbingers, and blossoming trees become haunted abodes for ghastly spirits. Sometimes the reality is as simple as winter becoming spring. Those poems are just as lovely as the others.

I don’t know what McKay means exactly with this poem. But, I can guess. I like to think he isn’t just talking about spring coming again. Rather a new chance at life, as he builds a “cottage there” on the hill “beside an open glade.” Here, the cottage is adorned with “black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near / And ferns that never fade.” These are places we want live and can dream about in darkness. If you are looking for a new start–or if you just want some warmer weather–this is a good time of the year for a renewal of mind and spirit.

Works cited

McKay, Claude. “After the winter.” Poetry Foundation. Web.

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Analysis of “America” by Claude McKay: Strength and Struggle

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In interpreting Americanness through the eyes of poet Claude McKay, we see his experiences manifested in the forms of the Harlem Renaissance and the reality of racism. The latter was/is a pervasive, violent thorn in side of Black Americans. In this post, we will analyze “America” by Claude McKay through a brief analysis. This poem offers insight into the dual lives of people of color in the United States and a hope for a brighter future.

“America” by Claude McKay Analysis

Inspiration

McKay’s poem was published in 1921, and comes from a variety of inspirations. For example, McKay was a Jamaican immigrant who came to the US in 1912. He wrote through heated times in American history, including the Red Summer and the Red Scare. Consequently, seeing this racism first hand influenced McKay political ideology and predilection for racial themes in verse. McKay was also a bisexual leftist, and felt marginalized throughout his life.

Interpretation

The poem “America” comes naturally from a sore spot in McKay’s soul. It discusses oppression and a rebel lifestyle that stands in contrast to the average, white American experience. McKay writes, “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.” McKay tells us that it is bitter to live in a land he loves that challenges him in all aspects of his life.

America, according to McKay, is “vigor” that “flows like tides into” his blood. The country gives him life and “strength erect against her hate.” What kills him inside also feeds him completely. “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.”

McKay espouses the hope that hate and violence will end one day because America is capable of that change. He can see it in the darkest spots. One day, it will not reflect the worst outcomes, he believes, but it will shed light upon the greatness that lies in shadow. As McKay writes: “Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.”

Even so, McKay places a empathetic touch on America’s spirit. Donna Denize and Lousia Newlin write in their article “The Sonnet Tradition of Claude McKay” that McKay “feminizes” North America. Through this poem, and others, he perhaps creates a loving, yet tumultuous, relationship between the speaker and the country.

The authors state: “One can’t help but notice how images keep shifting, as by the means of the sonnet form, the speaker negotiates the tension between conflicting emotions—passions invoked by the great promise of equality and innovation, patent traits of the American Dream” (Denize). Moreover, McKay dreams in this poem that America is capable of moving away from its violent past and inclination toward oppression. The goodness is there, yet it needs to show its face.

Read the full poem here.

Works Cited

Denizé, Donna E. M., and Louisa Newlin. “The Sonnet Tradition and Claude McKay.” The English Journal, vol. 99, no. 1, 2009, pp. 99–105. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40503338. Accessed 1 July 2021.

McKay, Claude. “America by Claude McKay | Poetry Foundation.” Poetry Foundation, 1 July 2021, poetryfoundation.org/poems/44691/america-56d223e1ac025.

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Claude McKay, writer, poet, and political activist

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The Harlem Renaissance writers had skill and audacity, and they were committed to writing transcendent work to show history and community. Similarly, their works were politically-minded and spoke to a generation of marginalized Americans. In this post, we examine Claude McKay, a writer who wrote from his moral center.

Biography

Claude McKay was born Festus Claudius McKay on Sept. 15, 1889, in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica. As a youth, McKay was instantly attracted to British poetry even though his parents had utmost pride in their Malagasy and Ashanti Heritage. McKay would blend both cultures together to form a strong writing voice with the help of a few friends:

“Under the tutelage of his brother, schoolteacher Uriah Thephilus McKay, and a neighboring Englishman, Walter Jekyll, McKay studied the British masters, including John Milton, Alexander Pope, and the later Romantics—and European philosophers …” (poetryfoundation.org)

McKay’s Writing Life

With education under his belt, McKay explored other aspects of culture and civilization. He wrote about the life of poorer Jamaicans and explored inequality. In 1912, McKay published Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads under a London publisher. Afterward, he moved to the US to study at the Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State College. He remained at the institute for a few short months.

Two years later, in 1914, he moved to Harlem, New York. In 1917, McKay published more poems in Pearson’s Magazine and Liberator, which featured his poem “If We Must Die.” The poem details the lengths that people should strive in order to see themselves vindicated in the eyes of the establishment.

Here’s the poem in its entirety:

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay

Political Activism

McKay would leave the US for a few years and publish Spring in New Hampshire in 1920 during his European travels. After returning to the US, McKay began his journey into political activism. He involved himself with communists and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. He would leave the US again to travel to Europe and North Africa, where he stayed for over 10 years, publishing a few notable works, including Home to Harlem and Banjo.

While he had dabbled in communism, he later began to dismiss the idea. After he returned to the US once more, he started engaging in more spiritual pursuits with the theologians in Harlem. Eventually, he converted to Catholicism, and toward the end of his life, he worked as an educator for a Catholic organization.

He died of a heart attack in Chicago on May 22, 1948.

Conclusion

Due to his monumental literary and political pursuits in life, he left a lasting impression.

“McKay’s viewpoints and poetic achievements in the earlier part of the twentieth century set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance and gained the deep respect of younger black poets of the time, including Langston Hughes.”

Poets.org

Notable Works

  • Songs of Jamaica
  • Constab Ballads
  • Spring in New Hampshire, and Other Poems
  • Harlem: Negro Metropollis