Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Citizen: An American Lyric, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bigotry, Implicit Bias, and Legitimacy
Identity and Sense of Self
Anger and Emotional Processing
History and Erasure
Summary
Analysis
An unidentified speaker who isn’t necessarily tied to the protagonist’s point of view notes that it’s possible to use language to cope with the pent-up emotions that come along with racism and mistreatment. However, the speaker isn’t sure what it would be like to actually let oneself truly express such feelings. In line with this, the protagonist herself wonders what her “outburst” would be like if she would “just cry out—”; however, she doesn’t finish her sentence. Instead, she keeps her feelings to herself.
Throughout Citizen, there sometimes emerges a distinction between the protagonist and whoever is actually saying the words that appear on the page (the speaker). In other words, the unidentified speaker isn’t always closely associated with the protagonist, though sometimes the two figures seem to blend into one another. Because of this, it’s never entirely clear what point of view is at work in the pages of the book. This is an important dynamic to track, especially since the difference between the speaker and the protagonist becomes more and more pronounced as the book progresses, ultimately inviting readers to consider the idea of identity construction and the ways in which a person’s sense of self (which includes perspective, subjectivity, and the way one conceives of their own cultural positioning) changes in relation to the surrounding context. In this moment, the speaker and the protagonist seem closely related, as the protagonist thinks about anger in the same way that the speaker does, wondering what her “outburst” would be like if she let herself fully express her emotions. And yet, she can’t even imagine what her “outburst” would sound like, a sign that she is so used to concealing her anger that she no longer knows how it might manifest itself if she gave it voice.
Themes
Thinking about identity and subjectivity, the speaker suggests that the pronoun “I” is sometimes “supposed to hold what is not there until it is.” At this point in the book, the speaker uses a first-person perspective to describe a conversation she’s had with the protagonist (referred to as “you”) about the power of using the word “I.” The speaker suggests that the protagonist has “tried rhyme, tried truth, tried epistolary untruth, tried and tried.” No matter what the protagonist has tried, though, everyone around her always knows she is “suffering.” Continuing to consider identity, the speaker suggests that “the past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.” Going on, she urges the protagonist to “drag that first person out of the social death of history.”
There is a lot going on in this section of Citizen. First and foremost, readers should note the strange way that the words on the page have pulled away from the protagonist’s point of view, as the speaker delineates herself from the protagonist by not only addressing her, but also by referring to herself (the speaker) as “I.” This is made even more complicated by the fact that the speaker ponders the use of the word “I,” asserting that it is often used to “hold what is not there until it is.” This further destabilizes any understanding of who, exactly, is speaking while also implying that the use of “I” in this moment is little more than a placeholder, as if the speaker is trying to inhabit an identity over which she doesn’t actually feel any ownership. This calls attention to the slippery process of identity formation, indicating that inhabiting a certain persona or perspective is perhaps not as straightforward as it might seem—especially when the speaker (or, for that matter, the protagonist) exists in a world that simultaneously dismisses the effects of racism while also focusing on her race and making unfounded assumptions based on her skin color. When the speaker says that the protagonist has “tried rhyme, tried truth, tried epistolary untruth,” she effectively comments on the book itself and the process of writing it, thereby implying that Citizen is a compilation of poetry, autobiography, and fiction that serves as the protagonist’s (or, in this case, Claudia Rankine’s) attempt to process not only the injustices of the past, but also how society’s willful ignorance of these injustices (the “social death of history”) negatively impacts her sense of self and her cultural positioning.
Themes
Switching tracks, the narrative returns to its previous habit of describing events in the protagonist’s life, turning to an encounter she has in a drugstore. When she is about to walk up to the cashier, a man cuts her in line. When the cashier points this out to the man, he apologizes profusely, insisting that he didn’t see the protagonist. The protagonist tries to give him an excuse by suggesting that he must be in a hurry, but he replies by insisting that he really didn’t see her.
As abstract and philosophical as Citizen can get, it also frequently grounds readers by focusing on a small, everyday scene. Following the speaker’s heady ruminations about identity, cultural positioning, and history, a simple interaction takes place at a drugstore. This interaction between the protagonist and the man who cuts her in line serves as a simple illustration of some of the more complex ideas the speaker expresses, demonstrating the extent to which society at large threatens to interfere with the protagonist’s sense of self by effectively insisting that her position in the world is inconsequential and easily overlookable.
Themes
