Claude McKay
Claude McKay’s The Harlem Dancer is a perfect example of poetry that creates incredibly vivid imagery. This poem follows the form of the traditional Shakespearian sonnet, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g. The poem starts quite abruptly, setting up the scene and describing the characters. We realize right away that the scene is set in a darker, more fun atmosphere considering it is full of “youths” and “young prostitutes.” (line 1) Their laughter makes them seem very carefree and happy.
The following lines describe the subject they are viewing; the Harlem dancer. It is a very attractive girl, with her body being described as “perfect.” (2) Every description of her makes her out to be very beautiful and good at what she does. Metaphors are used to describe her voice, “like the sound of blended flutes,” (3) as well as how her body moved, “a proudly-swaying palm/ grown lovelier for passing through a storm” (7-8) These metaphors allow the audience to more properly distinguish what the dancer is like. We can imagine that she is a very good singer and a strong and beautiful dancer. Her hair is described, with “shiny curls,” (9) and it is stated she is not wearing much clothing, with a “light gauze hanging loose about her form.” (6) She is described as a beautiful picture of strength, talent, and femininity, with no harsh word written about her.
In the final four lines, the audience learns once again that the dancer is being looked at by boys and girls alike. These young people are “devour[ing] her with their eager, passionate gaze,” (12) showing that they think she is wonderful, impressed with her talent and beauty. The final couplet shows that although the Harlem dancer seems to have it all (talent, beauty, admiration, etc), she has a “falsely-smiling face,” (13) meaning she is not totally happy or herself in her current position. The last line proves that “her self was not in that strange place.” (14) The Harlem dancer did not find her happiness and/or worth in what she was doing, something was off about it. Although the poem does not go into why the Harlem dancer was faking a smile, it makes the poem all the more intriguing. It shows us that people of all walks of life, outwardly happy or not, have secrets too.
In class I hope we can follow up on this post and answer your question: why is this Harlem dancer faking a smile? What does she know that her audience doesn’t? In what ways does this relate to Dunbar’s poem “we wear the mask”? And how does this reflect the poem’s own form / construction? Great post–this should start a productive conversation in class today.
I find that Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “we wear the mask” relates here in that Dunbar is referring to a “double consciousness” that existed during the Harlem Renaissance among black people. This “mask” he refers to is the second conscious that black people felt the need to display in the public eye that hides their “true” identities, much in the way that McCay’s dancer puts on her “false smiling face.” This public portrayal of black culture was one of the more controversial topics during the Harlem Renaissance, as many black people debated these politics of respectability. Some felt that black people should act respectable in the public eye, lifting themselves up to the standards of white people. For example, many black women’s clubs of the time had slogans such as “lift as we climb,” meaning that they were striving to lift the black community out of the “low down folk” culture of drugs and blue music and to assimilate themselves into white culture. Others argued that the “masks” worn were in no way true portrayals of black interiority and therefore had no purpose. They asked why black people should deny their true identity by imitating whites and what was wrong with embracing the beauty of their own culture. I find the sonnet form a very interesting and effective devise for delivering such a message. “We wear the mask” maintains a strict form yet breaks it for both lines where the title is repeated, emphasizing further the false public performance that black people felt the need to display and the constraint that black people must have felt on their individual lives and culture.