Claude Mckay's The Harlem Dancer

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Claude McKay's poem "The Harlem Dancer" displays his idea of community and racial love by depicting the objectification of a singing and dancing African American woman during Harlem Renaissance. In his Shakespearean sonnet, his use of a blazon starting with the bottom of her body serves as an inlet into the audience's point of view and allows the reader to become a participant in her objectification. In starting the blazon at the bottom of the woman's body, the reader doesn't understand that the poem isn't meant to sexualize her body until we reach the Volta which serves to show a disconnect between his communal love for her and the readers and audiences sexualized objectification of her. In the beginning imagery of the poem it seems as though …show more content…

The blazon serves to aestheticize her to the point that the poem itself is objectifying the woman. When he says "And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway (384)" he is taking away from her as a person and showing the more romanticized love for her. He is treating her body as nothing more than to be leered at with desire and no true love. However, in the next lines, her body is depicted as earthly, graceful, and proud. He says, "To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm/Grown lovelier for passing through a storm (384)" This gives an opposing view to her as just a sex object. His portrayal of her as this strong earthly being can be seen as an allusion to her as Gaea the goddess of earth. She is this beautiful and strong being but is being used in all the wrong ways that ultimately take away from her as a whole. Furthermore, everyone is subjecting her to their own pleasures either lust or envy, but she is so much more than that as you look deeper into her soul. This is the same in the use of the earth for human's worldly pleasures that take away from and kill the earth, because of selfishness. Comparison inside the blazon keeps her in limbo as both an object of desire and lust, but also a woman that is strong and powerful and deserves to be …show more content…

The Volta here serves to ground her as a human and show that she is much more than what he is objectified as. It is also in these lines we see the poets true love of the woman as being communal and partially familial based. When he says, "But, looking at her falsely-smiling face/I knew her self was not in that strange place (384)", these two lines show that her heart is not here in her job, but far away. The use of the word "self" as not being there is a comparison to her superficial lustful body and voice being there, but her soul and mind are not there in her body. Here McKay uses a partial apostrophe when referring to her because she is separate from her body, so it is as if she isn't there doing a job, but someplace else where she truly wants to be. It is this recognition on the reader and speaker, that change the gaze of her from lustful to ashamed and guilty because she isn't truly consenting to her own objectification, but she needs to have money to survive. She does not want to be there singing and dancing for random people on the street, and this reason is the reason that the unabashed gazing at her is truly problematic in the poem. The speaker also sees himself in her because of his family and communal love for her, he is connected to her and we can infer that because of the time in history and his relation

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