Worksheet 8: Claude McKay, “The White House”

This worksheet will step you through the first 4 steps in the process of doing a close reading of Claude McKay’s sonnet, “The White House.”

Step 1: Definitions

Please provide brief definitions of the following words. Don’t just copy the first definition listed in a dictionary; read through the variations of meaning and compile a definition that seems the most relevant to the way that McKay is using the word.

“rends”

“vitals”

“chafing”

“inviolate”

Step 2: Paraphrase/summary

Please write 2-3 sentences that summarize what we know about the poem: Who is speaking (what do we know about them)? Whom (or what) is the speaker addressing? What kind of relationship does the speaker have to the addressee? What is the speaker describing feeling, and what actions towards those feelings does the speaker take?

Step 3: Noticing (collect data for interpretation)

For the purposes of this exercise, I will list features/moments of this poem that I’ll ask you to interpret (listed below). So I’ll do the noticing for you; you can skip this step and go straight to step 4.

Step 4: Analyze and interpret

Please take a moment and analyze the following details of the poem’s language. Please write your thoughts on each set of questions below that set of questions, and be prepared to discuss and compare your interpretations in TA section.

The White House

–Why title this poem “the white house”? Does McKay mean the place where the sitting US President lives, or something else, or both?

Your door is shut against my tightened face,

– why not just “your door is shut”? What difference does it make to our sense of this relationship that McKay specifies this door is shut “against my … face”?

And I am sharp as steel with discontent;

–why describe this discontent as “sharp as steel”—what images or associations does this comparison conjure? Does this comparison invite us to view the speaker’s discontent as something mostly…regrettable? Pitiable? Dangerous?

But I possess the courage and the grace

To bear my anger proudly and unbent.

The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,

And passion rends my vitals as I pass,

–the lines above this one have just explained that the speaker has avoided imploding or exploding from anger through the superior strength of their courage and grace. But now consider this line: what is this feat of emotional restraint costing the speaker? What is happening inside of the speaker?

A chafing savage, down the decent street,

–in this line, the speaker describes himself as a “chafing savage” walking down the addressee’s “decent street.” Does the speaker believe that he is a savage? Does the speaker believe that the addressee is “decent”? Whose view of the world is being represented here? Why?

Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.

–this image obviously repeats the first line’s image of a shut door, except now McKay specifies that this is a “door of glass”—i.e. a highly fragile material. How does this detail affect our view of the speaker’s relationship to the addressee, knowing that the speaker *could* break down this door by force if he wanted?

Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,

Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,

–why is the speaker’s “bosom sore and raw”?

And find in it the superhuman power

To hold me to the letter of your law!

–why does it take “superhuman power” for the speaker to obey the law?

Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate

Against the poison of your deadly hate.

–Here the speaker identifies two different ways that living in a racist society could kill him. In what ways could racist hatred be “deadly” to the victims of racism, and in what different ways might racist hatred work like “poison” on the victims of racism—sickening them from within?

Final detail to interpret: This poem is a sonnet, which is a highly-traditional and tightly structured poetic form (14 lines, regular meter, regular rhyme scheme). In terms of its form, then, this poem is at the opposite end of the spectrum from a poem like cummings’ “1(a”—whose form is entirely untraditional and free—not obliged to any metrical or sonic structure. The sonnet is also a poetic form that had been prominent in the white-male-dominated tradition of poetic writing in English up to McKay’s day—i.e. a poet like Langston Hughes would have considered this a “white” poetic form. So please ask yourself: WHY might McKay have chosen to write this particular poem in a tightly-structured poetic form that was handed down to him from white-dominated poetry? In other words, in what way does the poetic form that McKay has chosen echo the content of the poem he has written?