The Harlem Renaissance, Segregation, and discrimination were all harsh things that were happening towards the African-American race. In this era there was a person who it affected him so much that he had to create inspirational poems about it, that person was Claude McKay. McKay had to suffer from many of harsh and racial things in his life. While writing his poems McKay uses imagery in it while he is describing America. Most of his poems were sonnets. While he was in America McKay was suffering from emotional pain just because of his skin color they treated him differently. Segregation and discrimination are ways that Claude McKay an American living during that time has encountered frustration and optimism. First in foremost, while living in America McKay had to suffer from the pain of segregation through the Jim Crow laws. McKay has been through a lot in his life, he’s been to 4 different states, and he went to two colleges. While doing all of those excellent accomplishments McKay has been tormented on because of him being African American. In McKay’s poem “The White House,” he says “And find in it the superhuman …show more content…
McKay uses similes, metaphors, personification, and juxtaposition in his poem America. Throughout his whole poem McKay is making America sound like it is a person which is personification. Then in the first sentence McKay says “Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,” and that is a metaphor because America is not really feeding him nasty, and old bread but America is showing hatred towards him, and everything that he does. In his poem America McKay says “Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood,” and in there he is trying to say that because of how large America is, it is trying to discriminate against all of the African Americans, and he uses that through imagery because I can imagine how big America is against all of those African-Americans, and going against