AMERICA BY: CLAUDE MCKAY

BACKGROUND ON CLAUDE MCKAY

• Claude McKay, "America" from Liberator (December 1921). Courtesy of the Literary Representative for the Works of Claude McKay, Schombourg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tildeen Foundations.

• Claude McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, on September 15, 1890. McKay moved to Harlem, New York, after publishing his first books of poetry, and established himself as a literary voice for social justice during the Harlem Renaissance. He is known for his novels, essays and poems, including "If We Must Die" and "Harlem Shadows." He died on May 22, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois.

ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

FORM

The way the poem is sit up is like a Rhyme Scheme and they have two couplets at the end

It has four stanzas and it’s a Sonnet

America By 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.

ABAB

CDCD

EFEF

GG

IMAGERY

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. What the poet is saying is that America is

going against him.

IMAGERY 2

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, What the poet is saying that America is the ruler and he is trying to fight for what he believes in.

IMAGERY 3

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

What the poet is saying is that he has hope but he only have little of it.

IMAGERY 4

Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.What the poet is saying is that he has hope for America

SPEAKER

• The speaker is the author a regular person that’s trying make it in America.

POETIC TERMS

• Personification-the author uses that by comparing America to a women, tiger and priceless treasures.

• Imagery to show the reader what he me like when he say. And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth an some other things.

• Sonnet the author uses that to help the reader understand and remember it.

• rhyne

LITERAL MEANING

• The author is saying the good and bad things about America.

FIGURATIVE MEANING

• What the author really mean in this poem is that he have only a little amount faith in America because America is a carol place but hopefully it will work out at the end.

AUTHOR PURPOSE

• I think that the reason the author wrote this poem is because he had bad and good things that have happened to him in America but more bad then good.

THEME

• The message that author is saying is when the when life gives you lemon's make lemonade. What I'm saying is that when something bad happen to you don’t give up keep going.