Essay - Subway Wind by Claude McKay PDF

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Claude McKay is a Jamaican poet and he spent much of his life in the United States. He is the speaker of the poem Subway wind, which is a poem with a deep nostalgia for his homeland, Jamaica, and this is the central theme. We can conclude that because in the poem he writes many contractions(?...

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Essay - Subway Wind by Claude McKay Letícia Garcia Senna

Claude McKay is a Jamaican poet and he spent much of his life in the United States. He is the speaker of the poem Subway wind, which is a poem with a deep nostalgia for his homeland, Jamaica, and this is the central theme. We can conclude that because in the poem he writes many contractions (?) on city life and island life. It is obvious that he misses his homeland, which was a very calm and simple place, different from the city life.

He begins the poem by describing a wind that (like everyone in the subway) is trying to get a better place than the dark and strange subway "captive wind that moans for fields and seas". When we enter in a subway in São Paulo city, for instance, we can see many still face (s) and the far-off stare. I guess (it) is the same what McKay is trying to say in the poem, that the people in the subway are somewhere else, a place that they love better than being in the dark and crowded subway, in the sea, for example, but not in the subway. They are physically there, but their minds are by “by fields and seas”. He makes use of color imagery to describe the differences between the two places. He says that the city has a “gray train”. I believe that gray color suggests something old, rusty, heavy and then he contrast the life in Jamaica with “islands of lofty palm trees blooming white”. The city has also a “sick and heavy air”, “packed cars” and the island has a “perfume” of these trees in the air. He also uses sensorial language, which make us visualize the island itself. We can imagine the sound of the sea and the animals when it says: “through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep”. Perhaps the sea of McKay’s homeland was part of his childhood so it echoes through his mind forever and the new place that he lived was away from the sea, and he misses it. The poet makes allusion to social context trying to expose Cultural Identity. I believe the purpose was to show the difficult (y) of belonging to two different cultures, feeling separated from home and not being able to distinguish dream from reality...