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Nada E.Khalifa

Professor Mohamed Abdelwahab

Comparative Poetry

2nd November 2021

The Afro-American Identity In The Poetry Of Countee Cullen And Langston

Hughes : A Comparative Study

African-American history predates the emergence of the United States

as an independent country, and African-American literature has similarly deep

roots.

Lucy Terry is the author of the oldest known piece of African-American literature,

“Bars Fight”.

Terry wrote the ballad in 1746 after a Native American attack on Deerfield,

Massachusetts. She was enslaved in Deerfield at the time of the attack, when many

residents were killed and more than 100, mostly women and children, were taken

on a forced march overland to Montreal. Some were later ransomed and redeemed

by their families or community; others were adopted by Mohawk families, and

some girls joined a French religious order.

The ballad was first published in 1854, with an additional couplet, in The

Springfield Republican and in 1855 in Josiah Holland’s History of Western

Massachusetts (Adams.p22).
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The poet Phillis Wheatley (c.1753–84) published her book Poems on

Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773, three years before American

independence. Wheatley was not only the first African American to publish a

book, but the first to achieve an international reputation as a writer.

Some whites found it hard to believe that a Black woman could write such refined

poetry. Wheatley had to defend herself to prove that she had written her own work,

so an authenticating preface, or attestation, was provided at the beginning of her

book, signed by a list of prominent white male leaders in Massachusetts, affirming

her authorship. 

As a result of the skepticism surrounding her work, Poems on Various

Subjects was republished with “several introductory documents designed to

authenticate Wheatley and her poetry and to substantiate her literary motives.”

( Louise p.33)

Poems On Various Subjects revealed Wheatley’s favorite poetic form was

the couplet, both iambic pentameter and heroic. More than one-third of her canon

is composed of elegies, poems on the deaths of noted persons, friends, or even

strangers whose loved ones employed the poet.

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The poems that best demonstrate her abilities and are most often questioned by

detractors are those that employ classical themes as well as techniques.

In her epyllion “Niobe in Distress for Her Children Slain by Apollo, from

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, and from a view of the Painting of Mr. Richard

Wilson,”(Louise p.56) .

she not only translates Ovid but adds her own beautiful lines to extend the dramatic

imagery. In “To Maecenas” she transforms Horace’s ode into a celebration of

Christ.

In addition to classical and neoclassical techniques, Wheatley applied

biblical symbolism to evangelize and to comment on slavery. For instance, “On

Being Brought from Africa to America,” the best-known Wheatley poem, chides

the Great Awakening audience to remember that Africans must be included in the

Christian stream:

“Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d and join th’ angelic train.”

The remainder of Wheatley’s themes can be classified as celebrations of America.

Her love of virgin America as well as her religious fervor is further suggested by

the names of those colonial leaders who signed the attestation that appeared in

some copies of Poems on Various Subjects to authenticate and support her

work: Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts; John Hancock; Andrew

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Oliver, lieutenant governor; James Bowdoin; and Reverend Mather Byles. Another

fervent Wheatley supporter was Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the

Declaration of Independence.

She, however, did have a statement to make about the institution of

slavery, and she made it to the most influential segment of 18 th-century society the

institutional church. Two of the greatest influences on Phillis Wheatley Peter’s

thought and poetry were the Bible and 18 th-century evangelical Christianity; but

until fairly recently her critics did not consider her use of biblical allusion nor its

symbolic application as a statement against slavery. She often spoke in explicit

biblical language designed to move church members to decisive action. For

instance, these bold lines in her poetic eulogy to General David Wooster castigate

patriots who confess Christianity yet oppress her people:

                    But how presumptuous shall we hope to find

                    Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind

                    While yet o deed ungenerous they disgrace

                    And hold in bondage Afric: blameless race

                    Let virtue reign and then accord our prayers

                    Be victory ours and generous freedom theirs.

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A genre of African-American literature that developed in the middle of the

19th century is the slave narrative, accounts written by fugitive slaves about their

lives in the South and, often, after escaping to freedom. They wanted to describe

the cruelties of life under slavery, as well as the persistent humanity of the slaves

as persons. At the time, the controversy over slavery led to impassioned literature

on both sides of the issue.

Slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms: tales of

religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle, and tales of progress.

The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are the most famous because

they tend to have a strong autobiographical motif. Many of them are now

recognized as the most literary of all 19th-century writings by African Americans.

After the end of slavery and the American Civil War, a number of

African-American authors wrote nonfiction works about the condition of African

Americans in the United States, which is called “Post-Slavery era”. Many

African-American women wrote about the principles of behavior of life during the

period. African-American newspaper were a popular venue for essays, poetry and

fiction as well as journalism.

Among the most prominent of post-slavery writers is W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–

1963), who had a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University, and was one of
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the original founders of the NAACP in 1910. At the turn of the century, Du Bois

published a highly influential collection of essays entitled The Souls of Black Folk.

The essays on race were groundbreaking and drew from Du Bois’s personal

experiences to describe how African Americans lived in rural Georgia and in the

larger American society. Du Bois wrote: “The problem of the twentieth century is

the problem of the color-line”, (Du Boisp.10) a statement since considered

prescient. Du Bois believed that African Americans should, because of their

common interests, work together to battle prejudice and inequity. He was a

professor at Atlanta University and later at Howard University.

Du Bois plays a great role in collecting the talented Afro-American

poets . In June 1926, the African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of

The Crisis, delivered a speech at the Annual Conference of the National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), later published in

the association’s magazine under the title “Criteria of Negro Art.” In this widely

circulated article, Du Bois talked about the political standing of African American

art in explicit political terms.

“Criteria of Negro Art” came in the middle of along and heated discussion about

the political meaning of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.

This debate opposed “pure” artistic expression— a representation of African

Americans devoid of racial connotations—to “propaganda,” a pejorative term used

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to discredit black artists who depicted racism and/or exhibited racial dignity in

their literary and artistic creations.

Many studies about African-American art and its political implications focus on

this decade, which saw Du Bois trying to reconcile artistic expression with political

commitment during most of the 1920s, and heavily criticizing the Harlem

Renaissance after 1925.

Indeed, both Du Bois and The Crisis were at the front and center in the discussion,

as the New Negro movement grew thanks to the monthly and its editor, and the

magazine hosted most of the debate on its pages.

Literary scholars, as well as historians who focus on the 1920s, largely agree that

“at a time when some black intellectuals found safe harbor in the doctrine of art for

art’s sake, The Crisis as an agent of black print culture pushed a confrontational

aesthetics that revalued traditional categories of the beautiful ”(Castronovo,2004).

However, this interpretation does not apply only to the 1920s. If we

consider Du Bois’ work as editor of The Crisis from a long-term perspective, it is

evident that he understood the political importance of cultural production and

artistic expression since the first issues of the magazine.

As early as 1911, Du Bois started encouraging and promoting writers through The

Crisis, and he launched its first literary contest in 1917.

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Du Bois’ The Crisis also made a sophisticated use of visual arts to both challenge

racial stereotypes and dignify blackness since the early 1910s.

Hence, Du Bois’ ideas about artistic expression and his political commitment were

strongly linked since the beginning of his editorial experience, and even earlier.

In the context of Du Bois’ editorship of The Crisis, artistic

representation of black subjects emerges as instrumental to his political program

for racial equality. At a time when African Americans were rarely featured in

mainstream magazines—and when they were it was often in racist terms—

promoting a black art was more than just a way to build a strong cultural identity

for African Americans. In Du Bois’ view, reaffirming the dignity of African

Americans as artistic subjects was also a powerful political weapon.

The Harlem Renaissance as a golden age of African American arts

was an effort to remove the masks of racialism to put a new face on

African Americans. Known as The New Negro Movement, the Harlem

Renaissance was an unexpected outburst of creative activity among African

Americans.

Poems of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen comprise

frustration and hope and help to empower the African-American population

to realize the injustices. Langston Hughes consciously sheered from the

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Anglo-American tradition to create a Negro culture in America, without

being copied from another race.

Likewise, Cullen developed an aesthetic that clasps both black and white

cultures to bring the races to close together.

Besides, Home to Harlem by McKay as a representation of Harlem through

its international and proletariat migrated characters who have found a unique

comfort in Harlem such a pitch that they do not try to assimilate or

accommodate into White America. The idea of class-consciousness by West

Indian Negroes influenced American Negro writers who began to take up the

Negro as a literary subject throughout the Harlem Renaissance. They explore

a new form for African American literature and art, and their efforts in

expanding the New Negro art soul of the Harlem Renaissance sets the

literary and social frameworks for later internationally black and queer

movements.

Claude McKay Was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He became a

central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Born in Jamaica, McKay first traveled to the United States to attend college, and

encountered W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk which stimulated

McKay’s interest in political involvement.

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McKay flourished as a poet during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. During

this time, his poems challenged white authority while celebrating Jamaican culture.

He also wrote tales about the trials and tribulations of life as a black man in both

Jamaica and America. McKay was not secretive about his hatred for racism, and

felt that racist people were stupid, shortsighted, and possessed with hatred. In tales

such as Home to Harlem (1928), his depictions were initially criticized as a

negative portrayal of Harlem and its lower-class citizens by prominent figures such

as W. E. B. DuBois, but McKay was later applauded as a literary force in the

Harlem Renaissance.(Haiti.23)

Among his works that challenged racial discrimination is the poem “If

We Must Die” (1919), a call for his people to fight with determination and courage

against those who would murder them.

“If We Must Die” is a Shakespearean sonnet, it is a poem of political resistance: it

calls for oppressed people to resist their oppressors, violently and bravely—even if

they die in the struggle. Though the poem has most often been read as a call to

resist anti-black racism, it does not limit its call for resistance to a specific kind of

oppression. As a result, it has served as an inspiration to a wide variety of

oppressed people around the globe as they fight for their rights and freedom.

Thematically, it is a poem about confronting oppression. The speaker

addresses a group of oppressed people—a group that the speaker identifies with
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and seems to be part of. These people have been stripped of their dignity and their

freedom and they are in despair, cornered by violent oppressors. Faced with this

desperate situation, the speaker proposes a radical solution for their suffering. The

poem argues that violent, even suicidal, acts of resistance are the only viable option

for this oppressed group—the only way they can reclaim their dignity and freedom.

The people that the speaker of “If We Must Die” addresses are oppressed, so much

so that they are in danger of losing not only their lives, but also their humanity.

The speaker describes these people as surrounded by “monsters” and “mad and

hungry dogs” who will inflict a “thousand blows” upon them. They are “far

outnumbered” by these monsters. These metaphors indicate that the group of

people the poem addresses are a minority community threatened by violence from

a larger and more powerful group.

The oppression that the group suffers threatens to turn them into animals,

figuratively speaking—to deprive them of their humanity. As the speaker notes in

line 1, they are in danger of dying “like hogs.” But the people who oppress them

have also lost their humanity. The speaker consistently describes these oppressors

as horrifying, inhuman creatures: “mad and hungry dogs” and “monsters.” The

poem thus hints that oppression diminishes the humanity of everyone involved,

both oppressor and oppressed.

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The speaker goes on to propose a way for the oppressed group to regain its

humanity: violent resistance. The speaker proposes to match violence with

violence, saying that the group being addressed should exchange “their [the

oppressor’s] thousand blows” for “one death blow.” Though the speaker

acknowledges that this group must die, they can nonetheless die “fighting back.”

Essentially, “If We Must Die” offers two options to the oppressed

group of people it addresses: they can either die “like hogs” or “like men.”

Notably, the speaker and the group of oppressed people don’t have any choice

about whether they live or die. Their situation is so desperate that they can only

decide how they die. But, the speaker points out, not all deaths are equal. To die

“like hogs” will only underline the oppression they already suffer. To die “like

men,” however, will allow them to attain some measure of freedom and dignity

and to retain—in death if not in life—the humanity they are in danger of losing. As

a result of their bravery, the “monsters” who oppress them will be forced to

recognize their humanity, to “honor [them] though dead.”

The poem thus proposes violent resistance as the only way to reclaim

humanity and dignity in a desperate situation. However, it also indicates that some

form of oppression may always persist, when the speaker says: “even the monsters

we defy / Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!” The oppressed people’s

bravery, it seems, forces the oppressors to recognize their humanity. That is,
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humanity only comes when the oppressors finally grant it—even if the oppressed

take the action the speaker recommends. In this way, the poem underscores the

persistence of precisely the problem the speaker is trying to overcome: the

oppressors have the power to deprive other people of their humanity, and taking

that power away from them may be a nearly impossible task.

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 accursèd lot.

The first four lines of “If We Must Die” establish the poem’s theme and introduce

its form.

As the poem opens, the speaker outlines a desperate situation. Using apostrophe,

the speaker addresses a group of oppressed people who seem to be living under the

threat of certain death. (And the speaker is part of this group: he or she addresses

them as “we” in the first line). Given the death they face, the speaker argues that

the group must not die “like hogs.” This simile shows the speaker’s fear that the

group will be slaughtered like domesticated animals—“hunted” as though they had

been raised simply to be killed. In other words, the speaker is afraid that their
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deaths will strip them of their dignity and independence—and, more importantly,

of their humanity.

However, a parallel figure of speech suggests that the oppressors’

violence will also strip the oppressors themselves of their own humanity. Using

a metaphor, the speaker describes the oppressors as “mad and hungry dogs.” Both

metaphor and simile personify the animals in question. The dogs, for instance,

“mock” the “accursed lot” of the hogs. The combination of metaphor and

personification lets the speaker vividly show how the oppressors have no pity for

the people they slaughter; indeed, chillingly, they find their suffering humorous.

No one, it seems, is particularly human within such a destructive society.

Even from just these first lines, it’s already clear that “If We Must Die”

describes a dark and desperate situation. However, they also establish the ways in

which the poem itself is elegant and polished. Throughout, the speaker uses

refined diction such as “accurséd”—some of it already old-fashioned by the time

McKay wrote the poem in 1919. The form of the poem is also both elegant and

old-fashioned, a Shakespearean sonnet.

By writing a Shakespearean sonnet, McKay proves that a contemporary black

writer can match the prominent dead white men of English poetry, on their own

turf, using their forms. The speaker shows off his or her own literary skill,

using alliteration in marked fashion, as in the /h/ sound in “hogs,” “hunted,” and

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“hungry.” In using alliteration, however, the speaker is not just showing off: the

alliteration also underlines the connection between the dogs’ hunger and their

hunting, which in turn reduces the people the poem addresses to the status of

“hogs.”

The poem also follows the rhyme scheme and meter of a Shakespearean

sonnet. Its first 4 lines are rhymed ABAB and are in iambic pentameter, with the

occasional metrical substitution (like the trochee in the first foot of line 2,

“Hunted”). These lines are enjambed in an irregular fashion: the first line is

enjambed and the next 3 are end-stopped, with a caesura midway through the first

line. The pause the caesura creates separates out the poem’s opening phrase—“If

we must die”—as particularly important and so prepares the reader for the return of

that same phrase in line 5.

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!

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Lines 1-4 outline a dark possibility: the oppressed people the speaker addresses

might die “like hogs.” But in lines 5-8, the speaker encourages them to find an

alternative: perhaps they “must die,” but maybe they can at least die “nobly.”

The speaker promises that a noble death will change the dynamics of the

situation in an important way: the oppressed people will not die “in vain,”

because the “monsters” who murder them will be forced to “honor” them in

death. In other words, the oppressors will respect them for their noble deaths—

even though they will still murder them. This is a potentially troubling argument.

If “honor” can only come from the oppressors, then the oppressors still get to

decide the value of the lives they take. And that’s the problem the poem is trying

to overcome: the oppressors already have the power to diminish the humanity of

the people they oppress. In these lines, then, the speaker hints at exactly how

difficult it is to wrest power away from oppressive groups, even through the

bravest resistance.

These lines continue the formal pattern established in the first four

lines, following the rules for a Shakespearean sonnet are rhymed CDCD and

written in iambic pentameter . They with the occasional pointed substitution—like

the dactyl midway through line 7: “then even.” By putting the stress on the word

“then,” the speaker emphasizes the transformation that will occur if the oppressed

die “nobly” and not “like hogs.” The poem’s irregular use of enjambment also
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continues, with enjambments in lines 6 and 7. These enjambments help the poem

retain some flexibility and dynamism within its mostly rigid structure.

However, the poem’s highly structured character is on particular display

in two respects in these lines. First, it is evident in the repetition of the poem’s

opening phrase, “If we must die.” Repeating the phrase, the speaker uses

anaphora , drawing attention to the continuity between the first 4 lines and lines

5-8—both sets of lines outline the desperation of a situation in which oppressed

people have no choice but to die. Second, each of these two quatrains is a single

sentence, which begins in line 1 or line 5 and continues to the end of line 4 or

line 8. There is no enjambment across these quatrains, showing how the speaker

has calibrated the length of each sentence to f it smoothly with the poem’s rhyme

scheme. These formal features are further demonstrations of the speaker’s control

and proficiency in a difficult form.

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?

In lines 5-8, the speaker proposed that the group of oppressed people he or

she addresses should “nobly die”—instead of dying “like hogs.” In lines 9-12, the

speaker explains more precisely how they can make their deaths noble. Though
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they are seriously outnumbered, the speaker proposes that the oppressed group

should fight back and deliver “one death-blow” in exchange for the many attacks

they receive from their oppressors. Put simply, the speaker outlines a plan to

resist violence with violence. The speaker, it seems, does not accept the

arguments of pacifist intellectuals and activists like Henry David Thoreau and

Mahatma Gandhi: that oppressed communities should use non-violent strategies

of resistance. Instead, the speaker endorses violence—even if it costs all of their

lives. Indeed, the speaker does not admit any alternative and dismisses the costs

of such a strategy. In line 12, the speaker acknowledges that some of his or her

readers may have doubts about the plan or may be unwilling to lay down their

lives. But the speaker uses aporia to dismiss these doubts. That is, instead of

debating or even directly acknowledging these doubts, the speaker simply waves

them aside with a rhetorical question .

Throughout the poem, the speaker is vague about who the group of

oppressed people is—and who their oppressors are. In these lines, it begins to

seem that this might be an intentional, conscious strategy on the part of the

speaker. The speaker refers to the oppressed group simply as “kinsmen” and the

oppressors as “the common foe.” Though the poem emerges from a specific

historical context—the race riots of 1919, which occurred across the United

States and are often called “the red summer”—it is careful to suppress this
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context. It speaks both to its own historical moment and more broadly, addressing

all oppressed people, no matter who they are. By avoiding naming its context, the

poem subtly proposes that all oppressed people have a “common foe” and that

they are all “kinsmen.” It thus suggests that its strategy—of confronting violence

with violence—applies to all struggles for freedom.

This quatrain continues the formal pattern established in the poem’s first

eight lines. It is rhymed EFEF, in iambic pentameter (again with a few metrical

substitutions, like the spondee at the end of line 11: “death-blow,” which mimics

the force of the blow). However, the speaker has stopped using enjambment

altogether: lines 9-14 are all end-stopped . It’s as if the speaker’s struggle has

grown too urgent to allow the long, fluid sentences that made up the first two

quatrains. As a result, it seems, the speaker is pulling out all the stops to make

readers pay attention to his or her argument, and that means relying on dramatic

punctuation at the ends of lines. The speaker does use internal rhyme to keep the

poem from feeling too stiff in the absence of enjambment, with “show” and

“blows” in line 10-11. And the speaker also uses consonance in these lines to

highlight their essential meaning. For example, line 9 contains a strong /m/

sound: “O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!” The repeated /m/ sound

binds the line together and mimics the sense of commonality and mutuality that

the speaker wants oppressed groups to experience.

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

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

In this couplet, the speaker summarizes his or her argument and explains its

ultimate consequences.

The speaker says that if the oppressed group fights back against their oppressors,

they will die, but the crucial difference is that they will die “like men.” This simile

pairs with the speaker’s simile in line 1: the options open to the oppressed group

are to die “like hogs” or to die “like men.”

In other words, the speaker suggests that they will regain their humanity through

their own violent resistance. Importantly, however, the speaker does not suggest

that the oppressors will regain their humanity. Indeed, the speaker reuses a

metaphor from earlier in the poem. In the same way that the speaker compares the

oppressors to “mad and hungry dogs” in line 3, in line 13, the speaker describes

them as a “murderous, cowardly pack.” In other words, there has been no change

in the oppressors’ condition: they remain a violent, terrifying group of animals.

The humanity of the oppressors is ultimately not the speaker’s concern, or the

poem’s. The speaker is focused instead on how best to regain the humanity of the

oppressed and recommends violence as their only meaningful course of action.

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In its final two lines, the poem continues to follow the standard rules for

a Shakespearean sonnet . Its rhyme scheme switches, as the form dictates: instead

of the criss-cross pattern that characterized lines 1-12, lines 13-14 are rhymed

GG. Line 13 is end-stopped , but only weakly: because line 14 is not

grammatically complete on its own, it feels more like an enjambment . And there

are two caesuras in line 14, which bracket the word “dying.” Though the speaker

has been relatively frank about the stakes of the plan he or she recommends

elsewhere in the poem, here the speaker seems to shy away from the

consequences of the violence he or she encourages, seeming to create some

distance from the act of dying by isolating it between two commas.

The final two lines of a Shakespearean sonnet often contain what’s known

as a volta or a turn: an opportunity for the speaker to reflect on the poem, perhaps

change his or her mind, and offer a fresh perspective on the issues the poem has

raised. The speaker, however, does not take this opportunity in “If We Must Die.”

Though there are subtle shifts in the poem’s rhetoric throughout, the poem is one

continuous thought, without any significant doubt or reconsideration. The speaker

is completely f irm in his or her passionate argument for violent resistance to

oppression, and the choice to forgo a true volta in these final lines underscores

that confidence.
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McKay uses symbolism throughout his poem, Hogs, Dogs, Monsters, and

Open Grave .

Literally speaking, hogs are farmyard animals, slaughtered for pork and bacon.

But as the word “like” indicates, these are not literal hogs: instead, the speaker is

using a simile to show how the oppressed people the poem addresses are in

danger of becoming “like hogs.” The hogs thus serve as a symbol for the

conditions they find themselves in: they are treated like animals, not human

beings. They are raised for slaughter, and they are kept under tight control in pens

or corrals. They do not have freedom of movement. This symbol suggests that the

oppressed people the poem addresses (and more broadly, oppressed people

everywhere) lack some of the basic freedoms necessary to live a life that’s truly

human. And further, it suggests that their oppressors have systematically worked

to deny them those rights, creating something like a farm: an organized system

that limits people’s freedom and deprives them of their fundamental rights as

humans.

While the oppressed people the poem addresses are like “hogs,” then the

people who harass them are “dogs”.

Here, the speaker uses the dogs as a symbol for mob violence: these metaphorical

dogs come in “packs”; they are “mad and hungry”; they both mock and attack.

There is some ambiguity in the symbol, since dogs are used as both herding and
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hunting animals; it is somewhat unclear whether the dogs are attempting to hunt

or to control the “hogs,” though the word “murderous” in line 13 suggests that

the “dogs” do want to kill the “hogs.”

In any case, the distinction makes little difference to the speaker, who seems to

argue that it feels as terrifying and as degrading to be herded as to be hunted.

And both practices end in the same result: the hogs are slaughtered. However,

dogs don’t run farms; they are working animals, under the control of farmers. The

symbol thus subtly implies that the mobs are not free either. Instead, perhaps

without realizing it, they are also doing the bidding of someone else or some

other power (likely a societal one) that the poem does not name.

Until line 7, the speaker uses symbols drawn from farming and hunting, with

“dogs” and “hogs” dramatizing the dynamics of oppression. In line 7, however,

the speaker switches the source of symbols and describes the oppressors simply

as “monsters.” This is a broad, even generic symbol: the reader does not learn

what kind of monsters they are or what exactly is dangerous or frightening about

them. The symbol is thus used simply to indicate that the people who are

oppressing the people the speaker addresses are themselves inhuman. Their

status as monsters symbolizes the way that the violence and virulence of their
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oppression has degraded them into something namelessly awful that isn’t even

human anymore.

In line 12, the speaker admits the full cost of the violent resistance that

he or she recommends: in front of the speaker and the oppressed people he

address lies an “open grave.” In other words, all of these people will almost

certainly die in the struggle—there is little possibility of escape or a liberated life.

The “open grave” is thus symbolic: it represents death itself. The fact that the

speaker uses a symbol (rather than referring to death directly) is potentially

revealing. It suggests that the speaker is not entirely comfortable with the

consequences of his or her ideas, despite how confident his or her words have been

throughout the poem. The fact that he or she feels the need to disguise those

consequences, however slightly, with a symbol indicates that maybe the speaker

does feel a bit of uncertainty after all.

Moreover, another prominent figure in African-American poetry, is Jean

Toomer. He Was an American poet and novelist commonly associated with

the Harlem Renaissance, though he actively resisted the association, and

modernism. His reputation stems from his novel Cane (1923), which Toomer

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wrote during and after a stint as a school principal at a black school in rural Sparta,

Georgia. 

Sociologist  Charles S. Johnson called “Cane”  “the most astonishingly brilliant

beginning of any Negro writer of his generation”.(Sehgal, 58) .

Toomer resisted being classified as a Negro writer, as he identified as “American”.

For more than a decade Toomer was an influential follower and representative of

the pioneering spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff.

Since the late 20th century, collections of Toomer’s poetry and essays have been

published, and his Essentials was republished; he self-published it in 1931. It

included “Gurdjieffian aphorisms”.

In 1922, he moved to Sparta, Georgia to become a school principal. It was

from this trip to the South that he began writing heavily about the African-

American experience, eventually culminating with the publication of his most

famous work, Cane, an experimental collection of stories and poems. It was hailed

by critics and is seen as an important part of the Harlem Renaissance. The work is

also categorized with that of other writers of the time, such as Gertrude

Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and T.S. Eliot, for its contributions to Modernism. In his

introduction to Cane, Waldo Frank wrote that, “a poet has arisen among our

American youth who has known how to turn the essences and material of his

Southland into the essences and materials of literature.”( Frank.23).

 Khalifa 26

The Harlem Renaissance movement was centered in the cosmopolitan

community of Harlem, in New York City, which had attracted talented migrants

from across the country. During the 1920s, a fresh generation of African-American

writers emerged, although a few were Harlem-born. Other leading figures included

Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.

Countee Cullen (1903-1946), was an American poet, novelist, children’s writer,

and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance was influenced by a movement called Néegritude which

represents “the discovery of black values and the Negro’s awareness of his

situation”.  Cullen saw Negritude as an awakening of a race consciousness and

black modernism that flowed into Harlem. Cullen’s poetry “Heritage” and “Dark

Tower” reflect ideas of the Negritude movement. These poems examine African

roots and intertwine them with a fresh aspect of African American life.

Cullen maintained close friendships with two other prominent writers,

such as Langston Hughes (1901-1967) .

 Khalifa 27

However, Hughes critiqued Cullen, albeit indirectly, and other Harlem

Renaissance writers, for the “desire to run away spiritually from [their] race”

(Jackson, 76).

Hughes condemned “the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of

American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as

possible.” (Jackson 80). Unlike, Hughes, Cullen wanted to escape his identity.

Since his black color makes him classified as a second-class writer, while he in

himself feels that he is a first-class artist.

Though Hughes critiqued Cullen, he still admired his work and noted the

significance of his writing.

The social, cultural, and artistic explosion known as the Harlem

Renaissance was the first time in American history that a large body of literary, art

and musical work was contributed by African-American writers and artists.

Countee Cullen was at the epicenter of this new-found surge in literature. Cullen

considered poetry to be raceless.  However, his poem “The Black Christ” took on

a racial theme, exploring a black youth convicted of a crime he did not commit.

“But shortly after in the early 1930s, his work was almost completely (free) of

racial subject matter. His poetry instead focused on idyllic beauty and other classic

romantic subjects.”(Jaynes, 241).

 Khalifa 28

In contrast to Cullen, Hughes was so proud of his color and identity.

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,‖ by Langston Hughes is about

an African American poet who shows to be a white-skinned poet. This was

showing that at the time they knew it was easier to be a white man or a white

writer. At the time, artists such as poets in the black community were looked

down on. Hughes stressed the theme of ―black is beautiful‖ as he explored

the black human condition in a variety of depths.

His main concern was inspiring of his people, whose humour, strengths and

courage were recorded as part of the general American experience. In his

manifesto, ―The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,‖ Hughes wrote,

―We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our

individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are

pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn‘t matter. We know we are

beautiful. And ugly too.‖ Locke praised the essay as a ―declaration of

cultural independence (Stewart, 446).

This was during the 1960s in America, and the essay by Hughes

was speaking about families of the time. Those African American families

would teach their children to worship the white man and try to become

more like them. That was a sad time in history when people were trying to
 Khalifa 29

keep their own culture away from their children. Those families believed

that being white would be the only way to go.

The essay of Hughes speaks of a lack of difference between middle and

upper-class African Americas. He speaks of an artist who held on to their

culture who at the time was almost rejected by everyone else. People now

look to the artists as heroes and look upon them as saviours of the

community. Unable to historicize the Harlem reality, Hughes concentrates on

the purely artistic, aesthetic, and intellectual worlds and loses sight of the

cultural aspects of social change in Harlem. (Cruise, 307)

Reading ―The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain‖ helps to

see the past of the African American community more clearly. Hughes

desired to stop racism to help African Americans appreciate their color and

race.

In 1926 African Americans were considered as the ―other.‖ Hughes

described that African Americans always felt that being themselves was not

something to be proud and they said: ―Don‘t be like a nigger. Hughes

wants African Americans to know they ―are beautiful. (Hughes, 1926, 1) He

wants African Americans to gain enough respect for them. An artist‘s work

should be considered by the quality of the work and out of the skin colour

of the artist. However, he goes on to state that younger Negro artists intent
 Khalifa 30

to express their dark-skinned selves without the fear or shame. Langston

Hughes states his theory as, ―I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet.

Harlem Renaissance writers employed the political, religious, and

social aspects of the African American activities as a catalyst for dramatic

illustration that differs in their experiences, style and language usage.

The difference of Countee Cullen from other poets of the Harlem

Renaissance period such as Langston Hughes was that he raised and

educated in a mostly white community; therefore, he could not write based

on his personal experience. Even, he did not employ favourite black themes

in his works and did not collect much attention to the theme of race. Cullen

was considered as a man who has racial self-consciousness. As Jones

affirms, Cullen ―reflects doubts about whether American Blacks can find a

true sense of identity by going back to African roots‖ (Jones, 263).

It seems that Cullen, as an African American, did not show a struggle with

his individuality in the world of white intellectualism. Maybe, the reason is

that he had a more severe identity struggle of his homosexuality against the

Christian statement of heterosexuality.

Contrary to Du Bois, who uttered that ―all art is propaganda

and ever must be‖ (Du Bois, 296), Cullen‘s option was ―art for art‘s sake.
 Khalifa 31

Hughes said his ―poetry of sound‖ implied ―the beginning of a new era‖

(Rampersad, 64).

In against, Cullen ―felt that there was very little free space for him to

develop his creative potential between traditionalism and the New Negro

modernism. (Sánchez-Pardo, 352).

African-Americans had suffered from popular misunderstandings of

evolutionary theory, and many assumed that the Blacks‘ ancestors had but

lately descended from the trees. Hughes made clear through his poems that

it was indeed important to be able to have come from the creators of the

pyramids and other ancient glories (Jones, 263-264).

Langston Hughes emphasized, ―[a] poet is a human being. Each human

being must live within his time, with and for his people, and within the

boundaries of his country. (Millanes Vaquero, 50)

Similarly, Hughes practised the literary technique of intertextuality.

In an article, ―The Twenties: Harlem and Its Négritude, Hughes claimed the

epithet for other popular poets of the New Negro Movement ―negritude

poets before la lettre. Specifically, he wrote, ―Had the word negritude been

in use in Harlem in the twenties, Cullen, as well as McKay, Johnson,

Toomer, and I might have been called poets of negritude‖ (Wintz, 408).
 Khalifa 32

Hughes explored the intertextual allusions of Negritude in various examined

poems, by comparing McKay and Cullen, Waring Cuney and himself

(Hughes,11-20).

For both Cullen and Hughes, Africa is their ancestral home of

imaginations. Trying to project it as a home, it runs into paradoxes. McKay

experiences Africa as an absence and unknowable missing point in his life.

Namely, what is missing can only be imagined. For McKay, a complication

of Jamaican ancestry and black American experience makes him more

asunder from Africa.

Besides, Langston Hughes‘s works influenced by his personal life, his concern

for South America, Africa as well as the Caribbean, his participation and

role in protest and radical movements, and his travel experiences.

The struggle of his own cultural identity as a multiracial person with

multiracial influences is revealed in his works. However, the uncertainties of

his cultural truth make him resolve the inequalities between the black voice

and the white voice and the happenings that his poetry exposes.

Countee Cullen‘s Heritage is a classic poem about Africa from a

Harlem Renaissance writer. In this extended meditation, Africa appears as a

 Khalifa 33

problematic and ancient land where wild animals wander and where the

humans portrayed are only somewhat friendlier than the animals.

As the speaker has been born in the Christian West and as a descendant of

―heathen Africans, he is dancing wildly whenever it rains.

His heathen emotional feelings, make it hard to realize that they and him are

civilized.

Vaquero says, although Cullen attacked racial prejudice, he found no

particular beauty in the black masses, as Hughes did. The only one of them

who had ever visited the motherland was Hughes but, as he notes in his

autobiography ,this encounter was anything but inspirational because the

Africans he met refused to believe that he was Black (Vaquero, 52) .

The poem consists a series of binaries comparable to those

Hughes‘s through repetitive rhyme and meter.

Cullen accepts Africa as a primitive force that encourages him to apart

from civilization by giving up culture for a taste of the forbidden. Dark

Continent, Africa as the opposite of Western civilization is the imaginative

space of release from the restrictions of civilization, represents a clash that

shapes African American representations of Africa during the Harlem

Renaissance. Africa becomes an imaginative arena in which a speaker in a

 Khalifa 34

poem or a character in a text can shelter the clothing of civilization and

live a more straightforward, natural and uninhibited life.

Countee Cullen, whose meteoric rise and subsequent fall as poet

laureate of the Harlem Renaissance might be seen as an object lesson in

how not to be modern and black. Though he benefited at an early age from

more and more positive attention than his peers, Cullen was replaced

relatively quickly in literary history, first by Langston Hughes, then by

Sterling Brown, as the dominant poets of the era and the most authentic or

truly representative of New Negro aesthetics and goals. This fall from grace

was due in part to false periodization and, more specifically, a narrative of

aesthetic development that moved away from conventional lyrics associated

with a degraded and feminized genteel past and toward authentically realized

folk forms linked with the present and future. This narrative had even

profounder effects for black women poets, who, though they accounted for

roughly half of the poems published in the periodical press, disappeared

almost entirely under the weight of an emergent literary culture that broadly

characterized their work, as it has Cullen‘s, as bourgeois, racially empty, and

feminine. (Kuenz, 509)

Cullen deeply respected the classics and decided to be seen as a

Negro poet:
 Khalifa 35

“I am not going to be POET and not NEGRO POET. This is what has

hindered the development of artists among us. Their one note has been the

concern with their race. That is all very well, none of us can get away

from it. I cannot at times. You will see it in my verse. The consciousness of

this is too poignant at times. I cannot escape it. But what I mean is this: I

shall not write of negro subjects for the purpose of propaganda. That is

not what a poet is concerned with. Of course, when the emotion rising out

of the fact that I am a negro is strong, I express it. But that is another

matter” (Molesworth, 81).

In addition, Langston Hughes wrote his poem “l, Too”, that demonstrates a

yearning for equality through perseverance while disproving the idea

that patriotism is limited by race. It was first published in March 1925 in a special

issue of the magazine Survey Graphic, titled Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro. It

was later reprinted in Hughes’ first volume of poetry, The Weary Blues in 1926.

This poem, along with other works by Hughes, helped define the Harlem

Renaissance, a period in the early 1920s and ‘30s of newfound cultural identity for

blacks in America who had discovered the power of literature, art, music, and

poetry as a means of personal and collective expression in the scope of civil

rights. In the poem, Hughes describes a ubiquitous racial oppression that

 Khalifa 36

degrades African Americans at the time. He writes from the perspective of an

inferior servant to a domineering white family that shoos him away to the kitchen

whenever company arrives.

Hughes ties together the sense of the unity that U.S. President Abraham

Lincoln spoke about regarding the separate and diverse parts of the American

democracy (the coexistence of slavery and freedom) by referencing Whitman’s

poem “I Hear America Singing” (Ward,90).

Thematically, “I, Too” is a cry of protest against American racism. Its

speaker, a black man, laments the way that he is excluded from American society

—even though he is a key part of it. But, the speaker argues, black people have

persevered—and will persevere—through the injustices of racism and segregation

by developing a vibrant, beautiful, and independent cultural tradition, a cultural

tradition so powerful that it will eventually compel white society to recognize

black contributions to American life and history.

Throughout the poem, the speaker insists that he is authentically American and that

his community has made important contributions to American life. The speaker

begins by announcing, “I, too, sing America.” This is an allusion to a poem by

Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing.” In that poem, Whitman describes

America as a song, which emerges from a diverse chorus of workers, farmers and

industrial labors, women and men.

 Khalifa 37

However, Whitman notably does not include black people in his vision of

American life. Even though the poem was written in 1855, just five years before

the Civil War started, he doesn’t mention slavery at all. The speaker objects to

Whitman’s poem, insisting that black people contribute to the American “song”:

in other words, that black culture and black labor have been key to creating

America.

The poem argues that these contributions have been consciously erased by white

people. In the poem’s second stanza, the speaker notes that he is forced to “eat in

the kitchen / when company comes.”

This is an extended metaphor for segregation. It describes the way that white

people treat black people and black contributions to American culture.

Despite being treated like a second-class citizen, the speaker responds to

injustice by declaring that he will “laugh,” “eat well,” and “grow strong.” In other

words, black people respond to racism and segregation by developing vibrant and

independent cultural traditions. These traditions give them strength so that, in the

future, white people will no longer be able to ignore their contributions to

American culture they’ll see how beautiful I am,” the speaker announces in line 16.

Further, as a result of this strength and beauty, white people will no longer be able

to exclude the “darker brother” from the table. Segregation itself will break down.
 Khalifa 38

The poem thus argues that racism involves a willful refusal to acknowledge that

black people as just as American as anyone else. And it argues that this refusal will

eventually cause the collapse of racism. The poem encourages black people to

persevere, to deepen and extend their contributions to American life and culture

until those contributions are impossible to ignore.

Hughes uses symbolism in his poem, such as kitchen, company, and table.

The “kitchen” broadly symbolizes the unequal treatment faced by black

Americans.

In lines 3-4, the speaker notes that he is sent “to eat in the kitchen / When company

comes.” On the one hand, this can be taken literally. Black people were often

employed as domestic workers for white families—tasked with things like

preparing food and caring for children. Despite relying on such workers, white

families would push them into the background, refusing to treat them as equal

human beings even as they benefited from their labor.

The kitchen is thus a key part of the poem’s  extended metaphor. In a poem

that describes American racism, the “kitchen” symbolizes one of its most perverse

expressions: segregation. Segregation meant the black people and white people had

to stay separate, in everything from where they lived to what water fountains they

used. Yet white families still relied on black labor—bringing black workers into
 Khalifa 39

their homes yet refusing to treat them as equal human beings or even acknowledge

their presence socially. Sending the speaker to the kitchen represents white

society’s hypocritical treatment of him, its desire to benefit from his labor without

acknowledging his humanity.

In “I, too,” “company” symbolizes white society. “Company” literally

means “guests” or “visitors.”

The white members of the American family seem to be ashamed of their “darker

brother”: they don’t want to acknowledge their relationship to a black person in

front of other people.

This suggests that the white members of the family are hypocrites. They only hide

the “darker brother” when other people are around.

This symbol is key to the poem because it shows that American racism and

segregation are rooted in shame and denial on the part of white people. White

people refuse to acknowledge that they are already part of an American family that

includes black people; that they already share the same house (metaphorically,

within the broader melting pot of American society, and often literally in the sense

of black people employed as domestic workers for white families).

The poem implies that white people would rather keep up the appearance of

superiority rather than acknowledge the equality and beauty of black people.
 Khalifa 40

In “I, too,” the table symbolizes respect, equality, and opportunity. In

lines 8-9, the speaker makes a prediction about the future. Even though now he

gets sent to the “kitchen / When company comes,” some day in the future he’ll “be

at the table.” By the time the reader gets to this point in the poem, there is already a

rich set of associations to draw on: the kitchen, for instance, represents segregation,

and the whole situation is an extended metaphor for American racism.

The “table” adds another important layer to this extended metaphor. It symbolizes

power and participation, the opportunity to engage meaningfully in American

democracy—as an equal player, a respected contributor.

When the speaker comes to the table “tomorrow,” he will no longer be a second

class citizen, but finally recognized as the full member of American society that he

is.

In the 1920s, the American society, which was plagued with its

distinctive, dry and restrictive traditions and traditions, strongly moved

towards other cultures that could have attracted charisma and pleasure Black

American community was enslaved for many centuries and the interest of

the American community eventually led to the emergence of primitive

fashion among American black writers who wanted to take advantage of the
 Khalifa 41

opportunity to make the most of their use and, of course, had to write

according to the taste of whitelist publishers, readers and sponsors.

However, the Harlem Renaissance that was centered on Harlem in

New York City in the 1920s and 1930s was an opportunity to develop a

uniquely African American culture and aspects of the traditions of their

homelands in Africa, combined with the developed cultural practices in the

United States. The Harlem Renaissance, now, after years, the younger

generation of authors are the fruits of the Negro Renaissance. We can say

that after years, Youth speaks, and the voice of the New Negro is heard.

(Pochmara, 72)

Work-Cited List
 Khalifa 42

1) Anderson, G. P. (2010). American Modernism, 1914-1945, Vol. 5,

Research Guide to American Literature. New York, NY: Facts on File.

2) Bontemps, A. W. (1972). The Harlem renaissance remembered: Essays.

New York: Dodd, Mead Mitchell, L. (1975). Voices of the Black theatre.

Clifton, NJ: J.T. White.

3) Buck, C. (2013). The American Mosaic: The African American

Experience.

4) Cruse, H. (1967). The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical

Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership. New York: Morrow.

5) Du Bois, W. E. B. (1926): ―Criteria of Negro Art‖. The Crisis 32

(October), 290-297. ___. (2007). The Souls of Black Folk (Oxford

World’s Classics). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

6) Huang, H. (2011). The Harlem Renaissance: Alain LeRoy Locke,

W.E.B. Du Bois and the ―American Dream‖. Humanities International

Journal,3, 1-17.

7) Hughes, L. (1995). The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York:

Vintage. ___. (1926). ―The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,‖

The Nation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

8) Jones, N. (1974): ―Africa, as Imaged by Cullen & Co.‖. Negro

American Literature Forum 8.

 Khalifa 43

9) Kuenz, J. (2007). Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Harlem

Renaissance: The Case of Countee Cullen. Modernism/modernity,14(3),

507-515. Doi:10.1353/mod.2007.0064 .

10) Lewis, D. L. (1994). W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868-

1919. New York: H. Holt.

11) Rampersad, Arnold (1986): The Life of Langston Hughes. 1902-

1941: I Too, Sing America. New York: Oxford University Press.

12) Stewart, J. C., ed. (1983). The Critical Temper of Alain Locke:

A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture. New York: Garland.

13) Wintz, C. D. (1996). The Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940. New

York: Garland.