Poetry Response #6

Britton Woodall

Jernigan

English AP

1 March 2011

The Black Hell

            In “The White City,” Claude McKay describes his anger due to racial tension. From the poem the reader infers that Claude McKay must be a black man during an earlier time period or from another country because very few African American men can say they have the name Claude.

            Claude’s does not describe the kind of anger he has, it describes the emotion he feelings knowing the existence of his harsh emotion. He “will not toy with it or bend it an inch.” In other words he has no desire to tinker with or understand the hatred in his heart. He goes further to say he “[muses his] lifelong hate” and he “[bears] it nobly.” His hate gives him a sense if identity to an extent. He flaunts like a war veteran wears his medal. Claude twists the expression of hate in this poem.

            Claude continues to twist the usual form of such a poem by juxtaposing black and white and heaven and hell. He calls his “heaven” the “white world’s hell.” He comes to this conclusion because his race essentially built the white man’s heaven. Therefore his heaven would be away from all the labor that made the “white world.”

            The end of the poem returns to loving his hate. He recalls all of the structures in the “the white world’s hell” and refers to them as “sweet like wanton loves because I hate.” The idea of sweet hate recurs often with vengeance.  He loves to hate because that is all he has known like wanton love.