The Full Text of “America”
1Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
2And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
3Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
4I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
5Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
6Giving me strength erect against her hate,
7Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
8Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
9I stand within her walls with not a shred
10Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
11Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
12And see her might and granite wonders there,
13Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
14Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
The Full Text of “America”
1Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
2And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
3Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
4I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
5Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
6Giving me strength erect against her hate,
7Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
8Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
9I stand within her walls with not a shred
10Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
11Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
12And see her might and granite wonders there,
13Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
14Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
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“America” Introduction
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Claude McKay's "America" is a sonnet first published in 1921, early in the arts and literary movement that became known as the Harlem Renaissance. It expresses the Jamaican-born McKay's ambivalent feelings about the United States (his adopted country), acknowledging the nation's vitality while criticizing its racism and violence. At the end of the poem, the speaker prophetically looks ahead to a time when this seemingly invincible country will fall to ruin.
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“America” Summary
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America is an oppressive place that forces bitter resentment upon me, attacks me like a wild beast, and robs me of my life and vitality. Even so, I'll admit that I love this hellish country that challenges my youthful strength and resistance. I feel the country's immense strength flowing through my veins, filling me with the power I need to resist its prejudicial hatred. The country's sheer size is like a flood that sweeps me up in its energy. But, much like a rebellious warrior calmly facing a king within his kingdom, I stand within America's borders without a single scrap of fear, hatred, or mockery. I look towards the country's grim future, in which I see the nation's monumental power and prosperity collapsing and fading from memory in time, like a vast array of riches sinking into the sand.
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“America” Themes
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American Bitterness and Love
Published in 1921, nine years after Claude McKay emigrated from majority-Black Jamaica to the majority-white United States, “America” channels the poet’s ambivalent feelings toward his adopted country. The poem’s speaker (who can be read as McKay himself) confesses his “love” for America despite the country’s oppressive “hate” towards people like him. The poem illustrates the speaker’s struggle (and, perhaps by extension, that of all Black Americans) to call a country that hates him home, even as the speaker also suggests that this internal conflict ultimately makes him stronger.
The speaker describes his American experience as “hell.” He accuses America of forcing “bitterness” on him, doing physical and/or emotional violence to him, and robbing him of health and vitality. He even compares the country to a tiger who bites his neck and “steal[s his] breath of life”—in other words, it hurts, stifles, endangers, and to some extent silences him. By calling America “this cultured hell that tests my youth,” he further underscores his emotional conflict, suggesting that even at its best, living in the country is a constant—and often torturous—challenge.
Only after listing these harms does the speaker grudgingly “confess” his “love” for America. In explaining his passion for the country, he highlights its exciting vitality and power, which paradoxically gives him the “strength” to resist its cruelty. The speaker emphasizes that America is above all large and powerful, depicting it as an irresistible force that flows into him “like the tides.” Therefore, the same power that torments him also fills him, strengthening rather than defeating him. It’s as if this painful love has revitalized rather than killed his spirit.
In a final emotional shift, the speaker reiterates that he does not return America’s hatred, but instead views it with a kind of stoic sense of calm as he foresees its doom. Comparing himself to a “rebel” confronting a “king” without “terror, malice," or "jeer," he insists that he doesn’t hate or mock America—but doesn’t fear it either. As he “gaze[s] into the days ahead,” he adopts the role of a prophet, predicting that America’s “might” and “wonders” will one day fall to ruin. In the end, he achieves a kind of emotional balance. Although the pain and vitality of American life “sweep[]” over him, they haven’t swept him away: he ultimately views the country with the calm of someone who understands its full reality.
Overall, “America” confronts a subject that wounded, animated, and preoccupied McKay. As a Black immigrant to America during the era of Jim Crow, he uses the poem to sort through his feelings about a country that—despite its vast resources—harshly oppressed people of his skin color. The emotional arc of the poem from “bitterness” to “love” to stoicism can thus be seen as the poet’s way of processing the beauty, complexity, and problematic nature of the United States.
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National vs. Individual Power
“America” dramatizes the conflict between an oppressive country and the individuals it oppresses. As the poem unfolds, the power dynamic between America and the speaker shifts. While at first the country is a merciless power that torments and “tests” the speaker, the speaker ultimately claims a kind of visionary authority over the country by predicting that its “might” will eventually crumble. Through this arc, the poem suggests that individuals can survive brutal oppression, but oppressive power itself can’t survive forever.
The speaker presents America as a large, powerful, oppressive country. He first personifies the country as a “she” who “feeds” him “bitterness” as if by force, then compares it to a tiger attacking him. The speaker also declares his “love” for America, yet “confess[es]” this love as if under torture in “hell.” This language initially seems to imply that the speaker is totally at the country’s mercy.
Yet the speaker also indicates that America isn’t as invulnerable as it would like to believe, in part because oppressed individuals like the speaker stand in a unique position to speak truth to its power. The speaker compares himself to a “rebel” fearlessly facing a “king,” positioning himself as a truer embodiment of American democratic virtues than the country itself. By adding that he already stands “within [America’s] walls,” he implies that the kind of individual power and perspective he represents has already broken through the country’s defenses—that the nation's “might” has already been undermined.
Rather than threatening retaliation or revolution against his oppressive country, then, the speaker acts as a prophet predicting its downfall. He serenely envisions the destruction of America’s “might and granite wonders” as the inevitable product of “Time,” which will bury the country’s glory like “priceless treasures sinking in the sand.”
Though he’s personally in the grip of America’s “might,” he wields the imaginative power to see beyond it, to a time when it will vanish. In this sense, he has transcended his “hell,” as his higher understanding frees him from fear and mockery. And by positioning himself above “terror,” “malice,” or “jeer” (mockery) towards America, he also suggests that such things are ultimately trivial or immaterial. The country may even be afraid of him, because it shows a petty “hate” that he feels no need to return.
Like another famous sonnet, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” McKay’s “America” warns that even mighty regimes collapse. However, “America” does so from the viewpoint of an individual who feels both tormented and invigorated by such a regime. Rather than an ancient or faraway land, it confronts the poet’s own adopted country, working out a complicated personal stance toward a modern empire. Countering vast oppression with individual, imaginative power, the speaker wins a kind of David vs. Goliath victory: he understands his cruel society better than it understands him.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “America”
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Lines 1-3
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life,The speaker begins by harshly criticizing America. The country has, the speaker implies, beat him down him with its oppressive violence. Rather than nourishing his body and spirit, it has force-fed him "bread of bitterness." This metaphor suggests that bitterness—or resentment and great difficulty—is something the country imposes on him regularly, as if it's a daily diet of bread.
Although America's Declaration of Independence honors the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the country attacks the speaker like a "tiger's tooth" piercing his neck. This second metaphor indicates that the speaker feels genuinely attacked by the country, as if the United States has purposefully hindered his vitality by taking away his "breath of life." The hard alliteration and consonance in phrases like "bread of bitterness" and "tiger's tooth" help express the speaker's anger about this; they also hint at the violent, merciless nature of the nation.
These opening lines also personify the U.S. as a woman ("she"), following an old-fashioned convention of referring to countries by female pronouns. In patriotic literature, the feminized country is typically portrayed as an ideal woman and the object of the speaker's love. Here, the speaker flips that convention by portraying America as a tormenting woman—a cruel mistress—whom he loves in spite of her violent hatred.
The first three lines also establish the sonnet's use of iambic pentameter, a meter in which each line contains five iambs, or feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM). This is the most common metrical pattern found in the sonnet form—a form most often used to express complicated kinds of love. From the first lines, then, McKay uses this poetic convention while putting a new spin on it, since "America" is—in many ways—a love poem that expresses a very deep, complex, and even disastrous relationship between a man and his country.
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Lines 3-4
I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. -
Lines 5-7
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. -
Lines 8-10
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. -
Line 11
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
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Lines 12-14
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
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“America” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Personification
The speaker personifies the United States as a powerful, appealing, but very cruel woman. Referring to countries with feminine pronouns is an old-fashioned convention that Claude McKay did not invent. However, this poem uses it in an original, politically pointed way, turning this personified "she" into a representation of America's injustice and of its strength.
Drawing on the sonnet tradition, McKay implicitly compares America to the remote or unavailable loved ones from other famous sonnet sequences of the literary past—sequences in which speakers discuss the pain of unrequited love. Similarly, the speaker announces his love for a personified version of America. Instead of boldly professing this love, though, he "confess[es]" it, hinting at his particularly complex relationship with his own country.
This makes sense, considering that the speaker is the object of America's violence and "hate." His love for the country is therefore passionate but deeply conflicted and perhaps even a bit masochistic.
The poem also personifies Time, whose "unerring hand" the speaker imagines as a destructive force that ruins America's power with just a "touch." In this way, the speaker contrasts America's violent attempt to dominate him with the light, easy touch of Time as it destroys civilizations.
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Irony
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Allusion
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"America" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Cultured
- Vigor
- Erect
- Fronts
- Jeer
- Darkly
- Unerring
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Civilized or refined.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “America”
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Form
"America" is a sonnet, and, more specifically, an English sonnet. This form consists of 14 lines divided into three quatrains followed by a final couplet. Traditionally, sonnets are associated with passion and romantic conflict. "America" plays with this tradition by staging an emotionally complex conflict between the speaker (a Black man) and his hateful—but nonetheless beloved—country.
Unlike most Shakespearean sonnets, in which the poem's volta or turn appears in the final couplet, the turn in "America" comes in line 8, when the speaker says:
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
In this moment, the speaker goes from letting America dominate him to actually standing up to it. This shift is marked by the word "yet," which calls attention to the poem's turn, signalling to readers that the speaker won't remain passive in the face of the country's oppressive ways.
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Meter
As a traditional sonnet, "America" is written in iambic pentameter, meaning that each line consists of five iambs, or metrical feet made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM). The meter remains smooth and stately throughout, with very few variations. Consider the opening quatrain:
Although | she feeds | me bread | of bit- | terness,
And sinks | into | my throat | her ti- | ger’s tooth,
Stealing | my breath | of life, | I will | confess
I love | this cul- | tured hell | that tests | my youth.The pattern here is extremely regular, creating a steady da-DUM da-DUM rhythm that is pleasing to the ear and draws readers from line to line. There is only one metrical substitution in this entire section, when, instead of using an iamb (unstressed-stressed), the speaker uses a trochee (stressed-unstressed): "Stealing." This calls attention to the idea that America robs the speaker of his breath, trying to take away his life force in its attempt to oppress him.
Other than this, there are very few metrical substitutions throughout the entire poem. Instead, most of the lines are rhythmically predictable, leading to a smooth-flowing style that matches the speaker's sense of calm in the face of hardship. This steady, calm meter also creates an ironic contrast to America's violent, oppressive ways.
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Rhyme Scheme
"America" uses the traditional rhyme scheme of the English sonnet:
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
To state this even more simply, the poem is organized into three rhyming quatrains and a closing couplet.
All of the rhymes in the poem are exact, except for the slant rhyme that occurs in lines 10 and 12 between the words "jeer" and "there." What's more, almost all of the rhymes are what's known as masculine rhymes, meaning that they only rhyme on a final stressed syllable. For instance, the only parts of "bitterness" and "confess" that rhyme are their last (stressed) syllables. This gives the language a controlled but still musical feeling, making the speaker's words sound simultaneously serious and appealing.
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“America” Speaker
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The speaker of "America" is basically identical to the poet, Claude McKay. The poem contains no evidence that McKay is adopting a persona different from his real self, and much evidence that he's speaking from his own experience. As a Jamaican-born Black man who emigrated to the United States in 1912, lived in the Deep South and New York City, and ultimately became a US citizen, he encountered fierce prejudice in his adopted country.
The speaker's references to America's "hate," to his "rebel" posture within its hostile "walls," and to his "darkly" prophetic vision all point to his marginalized status in a racist country. His attitude toward the hatred combines "bitterness" and "love" and finally rises to stoic serenity. As an abused outsider and a kind of prophet figure ("gaz[ing] into the days ahead"), he implies that he can see America for what it really is—unlike the mainstream Americans perpetuating racism and oppression.
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“America” Setting
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The poem's setting is named in its title: this is a poem about its setting. "America" comments on the entire United States. It reflects Claude McKay's perspective as a Black immigrant poet living in Harlem (a historically Black neighborhood of New York City) in the 1920s.
During this era of US history, many living Black Americans had been born into enslavement, racial segregation laws remained in force, and anti-Black and anti-immigrant prejudices were rampant. These conditions often made the country a "hell" for marginalized people, even as it claimed to be a beacon of democracy and land of opportunity.
The references to America's "vigor" and "granite wonders" don't necessarily imply an urban setting—they could apply to mountain country, for example—but they may be meant to evoke the soaring skyline and big-city energy of cities like New York.
Overall, "America" casts the United States as a place of stirring power and vitality on the one hand and shocking hatred and cruelty on the other. The country is, in the speaker's view, an empire doomed by its flaws.
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Literary and Historical Context of “America”
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Literary Context
"America" grew out of the creative context of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that McKay himself helped start. The epicenter of the movement was the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, whose Black population swelled during the "Great Migration" of the early 20th century. Having launched his poetry career with two collections in 1912 (Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads), McKay emigrated to the U.S. that same year, moved to Harlem by the end of the decade, and wrote prolifically about his adopted country.
"America" is a perfect example of his interest in this subject, first appearing in the avant-garde magazine The Liberator in December 1921. It was collected in Harlem Shadows the following year. This collection profoundly influenced other Black artists of the period, including the poet Langston Hughes and the author James Weldon Johnson, who later remarked: "Claude McKay's poetry was one of the great forces in bringing about what is often called the 'Negro Literary Renaissance.'"
The Harlem Renaissance overlapped with the early-20th-century period of experimentation known as Modernism, during which writers overthrew 19th-century literary conventions in pursuit of formally and politically groundbreaking art. McKay's poem appeared three years after the end of World War I, as poetic Modernism was gaining steam in America. Though its form is traditional, its approach is subversive: it bends the centuries-old conventions of the sonnet to a political vision that was daringly new.
Historical Context
The United States in which Claude McKay published "America" was a burgeoning, wealthy, powerful nation, quickly becoming a global superpower after aiding the Allied victory in World War I. It was also a place of extreme racial prejudice. Jim Crow laws mandating segregation were still in force throughout much of the U.S. and wouldn't be fully dismantled for decades to come (the effects of these deeply harmful laws still resonate in many areas of the country).
The Ku Klux Klan was also on the rise, and there were frequent lynchings of Black Americans (particularly in the South, where McKay lived as a student at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama). To add to this, Black workers were formally or functionally barred from many occupations. Even in the New York City of the Harlem Renaissance, Black residents suffered from discriminatory housing, employment, education, and policing practices, all of which fueled poverty and other social ills.
Simultaneously, a wave of anti-immigrant xenophobia, driven in part by wartime fears of "enemies at home," swept the US in the wake of World War I. During this era, the country barred most immigration from Asia, severely curtailed immigration from Europe, and gave rise to white supremacist ideas within its mainstream culture. One example of this was the author Lothrop Stoddard's bestseller, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920)—a racist, paranoid screed that portrayed "white civilization" as endangered by other races.
In other words, 1920s America gave McKay, a Black immigrant writer, plenty of reasons to accuse the country of "hat[ing]" him. It also gave him reason to believe the country was headed toward collapse, though not for the reasons people like Stoddard believed.
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More “America” Resources
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External Resources
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Biography of Claude McKay — Read a biography of Claude McKay at the Poetry Foundation.
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More Context on McKay — Read more about Claude McKay's life and work at the Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance — Read a brief guide to McKay and other writers of the Harlem Renaissance at the Academy of American Poets.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Tubyez Cropper of the Beinecke Library read the poem aloud.
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The Harlem Renaissance on Video — Watch a brief video introduction to the Harlem Renaissance and the 1920s cultural context in which McKay wrote "America."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Claude McKay
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