Is McKay’s vision of urban life unremittingly bleak or is there some more optimistic or redeeming aspect to it? Does the speaker’s apparently melancholic or depressive state in some of the poems reflect McKay’s perspective or is he more at a distance from it? How do you know?
In certain poems by Claude McKay, he depicts urban life as unremittingly bleak and emphasize the poverty stricken setting that plagued New York. In his poem “Harlem Shadows,” he described what is currently happening in the “shadows” of Harlem. He expressed the extent African Americans have to go through to provide for themselves. Young girls are seen going from street to street in order to find customers to sell their bodies for money. The struggle and the extent people are willing to go to, as McKay classify it, has brought his race to the lowest level in order to survive in such a cruel society. In poems such as “Harlem Shadows” and “Subway Winds,” they reflect McKay’s perspective. “Subway Winds” describe McKay’s yearning for his homeland and how New York/Harlem is simply a trap. He describes in the beginning of the conditions of New York with “sick and heavy air” and “pale-cheeked children”. Towards the end, he goes into details about his memories of home, which elicit his longing. In both of these poems, it can be concluded that New York provide false promises of a better life and is instead filled with setbacks such as racism.