The Poem The Lynching By Claude Mckay

There once was little need to question whether or not humans deserved the same respect as their other equal brothers, but now, there is. Members of the human race have been slaughtered, killed, and had their race put through torture that caused pain beyond mere imagination. Yet, it existed as pain just as real as anything else. An entire race of people disrespected and abused. So, obviously this race must have committed a crime beyond any else. A crime so cruel only the most evil could’ve conjured into existence. However, they committed no such crime. A race bred for slavery by the upper class of humans. The poem, The Lynching by Claude McKay, is a perfect representation of this torture and disrespect brought to African Americans. It presents a perfect showing of how the black society has been treated and the terrible torture they …show more content…
The first 8 out of the 14 lines within the poem identify with representing religion, “His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven./His father, by the cruelest way of pain...The awful sin remained still unforgiven./All night a bright and solitary star/(Perchance the one that ever guided him,/Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim)...”(McKay n.p.). The first line speaks of his soul ascending to heaven which can already be seen from a religious standpoint, the second talks about his father which can be related to the holy trinity in Christian religion as well as heaven was in the first line. It also mentions an awful sin which means the men who “have no remorse for their doings” are the ones who “remained still unforgiven”(Poetry Foundation n.a.). Then, the bright and solitary star is the guardian angel that gave his soul up to heaven and had to listen to fate’s wild whim. McKay’s life was extremely influenced and he was, in general, a religious person who believed in equality. Therefore, there was much more of McKay’s life that influenced his