Harlem Renaissance poets Jean Toomer and Claude McKay utilize religious imagery to explore and critique racial injustices and suffering in America. In Jean Toomer’s poem “Georgia Dusk” he uses religious imagery to highlight a sense of spiritual resilience during suffering among Black individuals. Contrastingly, Claude McKay uses religious imagery to critique the sacrilegious nature of white people causing suffering among Black individuals in the United States. While both poems employ religious imagery to explore their meanings deeply, Toomer focuses on the ability to prevail through religion while McKay shows the hypocrisy and sinful use of religion to perpetuate racial injustices. This paper argues that while both Toomer and McKay employ religious imagery …show more content…
Morris Davis argues that lynching poetry before 1920 focuses on the white audience while post-1920 lynching poetry focuses on the Black body. “The Lynching” by Claude McKay was published in 1920. This puts McKay’s poem in a unique position. I believe his poem shows both the white audience and has a focus on the Black body. At the beginning of the poem, we see the Black victim's spirit ascend into heaven as well as a description of the body “swaying in the sun.” However, as we transition to the end of the poem we see the lynching from the white audience’s perspective. We see white women staring without any remorse, and white children dancing and mocking the victim. Morris Davis writes, “The lynching poems of Dunbar, Hill, and McKay contain black bodies. The bodies are objectified to represent the result of the violence of white racism; they are commodified in hopes of persuading the reader to purchase the ideology being extended; ultimately, however, they are silent, for their ‘‘burned’’ (Dunbar line 55), ‘‘mangled’’(Hill line 7), ‘‘ghastly,’’ and ‘‘swinging’’ (McKay lines 10, 8) bodies are still
Claude McKay was born on September 15th 1890, in the West Indian island of Jamaica. He was the youngest of eleven children. At the age of ten, he wrote a rhyme of acrostic for an elementary-school gala. He then changed his style and mixed West Indian folk songs with church hymns. At the age of seventeen he met a gentlemen named Walter Jekyll, who encouraged him to write in his native dialect. Jekyll introduced him to a new world of literature. McKay soon left Jamaica and would never return to his
use of the word “black”, in reference to both men doing harvesting work in the fields, and the beasts of burden that help them. Within this poem, Jean Toomer effectively employs repetitions of key words, phrases, and ideas, thus evoking within the reader feelings of both monotony and starkness, as the “Reapers” of the title go about their work. Toomer also creates, through the poem’s images, a sense of unceasing mechanical motions (i.e., motions by human beings as well as by the sharp harvesting machinery
The Harlem Renaissance Poets consist of: James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean (Eugene) Toomer, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, and Gwendolyn Brooks. These eight poets contributed to modern day poetry in three ways. One: they all wrote marvelous poems that inspired our poets of modern times. Two: they contributed to literature to let us know what went on in there times, and how much we now have changed. And last but not least they all have written poems that people
Jean Toomer did one of the first and highly praised works. This would be Toomer’s only contribution to a time that he would later reject. Toomer is also known for his exquisite poetry like; Cotton Song, Evening Song, Georgia Dusk and Reapers. Jane Weldon Johnson had written the controversial “Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man” in 1924 and he had also edited “ The Book of American Negro Poetry.” This collection included many of the Renaissance’s most talented poets. Included was Claude McKay, a Jamaican
The Harlem Renaissance What was the Harlem Renaissance? Where did it begin? How did it change the lives of many African-Americans? In this paper, these questions along with a few other questions that will be answered. You will also be informed of what is known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance movement occurred during post war America at the end of World war 1 to the Great Depression in the 1930s. This movement was made up of a group of African-American writers who produced large
like wildfire. Harlem, a part of Manhattan in New York City, became a hugely successful showcase for African American talent. Starting with black literature, the Harlem Renaissance quickly grew to incredible proportions. W.E.B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes, along with many other writers, experienced incredible popularity, respect, and success. Art, music, and photography from blacks also flourished, resulting in many masterpieces in all mediums. New ideas began to take wings among
the relationship between the Renaissance writers and white publishers and audiences started some controversy. W. E. B. Du Bois didn’t oppose the relationship between black writers and white publishers, but he was condemning of works, such as Claude McKay 's bestselling book Home to Harlem (1928) for engaging to the prurient demands of white readers and publishers for portrayals of black debauchery. Langston Hughes communicated for most of the artist and writers when he wrote his essay The Negro Artist
men and women. Various people triggered the movement such as: artists Jacob Lawrence and Charles Alston; musicians Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith; writers Langston Hughes, W.E.B Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Rudolf Fisher, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston. Some older writers served as mentors like Claude Mckay, Alian Locke, James Weldon and Charles S. Johnson (Harlem Renaissance.) Two of the thousand persons who played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance were W. E. B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. W
intellect, they attempted to raise pride amongst themselves and attain equal status with those that oppressed them. Some of the best-known figures and key figures of this period were Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Jean Toomer. The Harlem Renaissance started as a literary and intellectual movement with a mission of both race propaganda and "pure" art. Their task was to identify and articulate a community consciousness rather than overthrow existing institutions
Paul Laurence Dunbar and the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt in the late 1890s were among the earliest works of African Americans to receive national recognition. By the end of World War I the fiction of James Weldon Johnson and the poetry of Claude McKay anticipated the literature that would follow in the 1920s by describing the reality of black life in America and the struggle for racial identity.
African Americans struggled for years, and they finally made a comeback in the 1920’s. The African Americans during this time period had a huge influence on the American society. The Great Migration had a great impact on African Americans moving to the north to find work, in the industrialized areas. The Harlem Renaissance era showed how blacks had an influence on American literature, music, and arts. The Jazz Age was another great event that occurred during this time period. The Jazz Age showed
This period is defined as the evolution of Negro art, literature, and culture. Harlem was the center of the “New Negro Movement”. Writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer placed major roles and in the New Negro Movement. The Harlem Renaissance was a way to promote African American pride, and was the start of the Civil rights movement. Alain Locke was critical in during the New Negro Movement and played an
What is the Harlem Renaissance, and what effects did it have on society? "Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro intellectual, pulling him from everywhere. Or perhaps the magnet was New York, but once in New York, he had to live in Harlem"(Hughes, The Big Sea 1940). When one is describing a “fresh and brilliant portrait of African American art and culture in the 1920s (Rampersad 1994),” the Harlem Renaissance would be the most precise postulation. The Harlem Renaissance proved to America that
of this black laugh was to go where no African American body could or would not go and defy the control of public space by whites (Chasar 58). Chasar provides many examples of this “Black Laughter” in popular African American writers such as Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes. They are all popular writers during the Harlem Renaissance who strongly show in poetry and writing the use of black laughter in their Chasar points out that Brown was referring to a law at that time in certain
During the 20th century a unique awakening of mind and spirit, of race consciousness, and artistic advancement emerged within the African American community in New York City. This emergence has brought about the greatest artistic movement in African American history. After the failure of the Reconstruction period the Negro was not considered either a person or an America. The idea that a Negro was an American was totally unacceptable to the white ruling class. The