The Poem of Despair

The poem that stuck out to me the most out of Javier Zamora’s collection of poems was For Israel and María de los Ángeles. This poem pulled on my heartstring and even at times made me tear up a little. This poem was about tragedy and loss; it was about things that happened to people who didn’t deserve it because of war. The poem for beginning to end was sorrowful; it started off with Zamora talking about how his uncle was forcefully fed unknown drugs, after that his fiancée was raped and killed by soldiers, after that his uncle was never the same again. He then talks about how this all happened before he was born and how he never knew his uncle; yet in the poem you get the sense that he still feels some sort of connection to him through the stories that he was told. The poem then goes on to talk about how his uncle didn’t deserve what happened to him. His uncle was good, he was smart and kind; the first people to talk to a gringo and talk in “Inglish,” when he talked people listened. He wasn’t like the rest of the Zamora’s “a loudmouth, a drunk, a dumbfuck, A thief, or a good-for-nothing,” he was good, the best of them; and he didn’t deserve what happened to him. The love between Israel and Maria was tender and soft, it contrasted the harshness that was going on around them. Their love was sweet and ripped away too early. The poem describes how when he found out about what happened to her he was never the same, he became a different person, the type of person who disarmed a guard. They say he went crazy and after breaking out of the psych ward was never seen again. The only thing truly left of him was his memory and the hope that he was still alive; a hope that was so strong Javier’s father carried a water bottle just in case he ever saw him again. It was clear that his father never forgot his brother and that he missed him very much. Looking for him in every ocean he saw; his “astro-nut.” The poem ends with the heartbreaking lines of “País mío no existes sólo eres una mala silueta mía una palabra que le creí al enemigo. -Roque Dalton” In these lines the somber, bitter, and heartbreaking tone is clear; goodbye to the country that gave me and my father nothing but sorrow.

The question that I have for Zamora is “Do you think that Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love poems and a song of Despair affect the way the you write poetry?”

-Paris Baker

Long Hours, Bad Conditions, Sweet Relief

The poem Outcast and the poem The Tired Worker by Claude McKay have a distinctive correlation between each other and when read together/side by side the reader can sense that the in the poem Outcast there is representation of speaker in The Tired Worker. During the time period in which these poems were written, 1920s, there was a vast amount of brutal discrimination against minorities in America. These two poem represent the struggles found in this time period especially for those who gas to worker tiring jobs in extremely bad conditions with bad pay and bad hours.

Both of these poems were written by McKay in Shakespearean sonnets with an iambic pentameter. the reason why I think that this structure allowed for a strong deliverance of the poems is because of the iambic pentameter. The iambic pentameter in the poems allows for certain words to be stressed and other to not be stressed. Words like “wretched day” in line 9 of The Tired Worker and lines in Outcast such as “And I must walk the way of life a ghost”(11), are stressed and unstressed due to the meter. The message of despair and wishing to be relived from the horrible work in the poems is further pushed by this rhythm as it creates a strong, almost like marching soldiers, rhythm, emphasizing on the pain of having to live/work in these conditions and the fact that the speaker knows that it will most likely be until the day that they die.

In the poem Outcast line 11 the speaker mentions that they “walk the way of life a ghost” then in The Tired Worker they tell their “weary body” to be “patient” that “too the night will wrap thee gently in her her sable sheet…” I interpret the reference to night as an allusion to death,. As if the nigh were to take all the pain and misery of working away because it’d be the end since the speaker believes that they will working during their entire life, and in the Outcast they reference to walking their life as a ghost. They connect on the lifeless feeling that comes with their current lives.

Guadalupe Lemus

The Inevitable Struggle

Being in the working class and knowing how dreadful it is, I understand why McKay feels this way. Being a black man around that time working for people that do not see you as equal is even worse, but you have no choice. In these two poems “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker”, both represent hopelessness and the despair that comes with all of the hard labor that a working class citizen endures. So yes, I agree that McKay’s “Outcast” represents the hopelessness and despair of the working class speaker in “The Tired Worker”.

McKay starts this representation of hopelessness and despair with “The Tired Worker” by describing the tiring aftermath of a long day of work. Starting with line 1-2, McKay says “O whisper, O my soul! The afternoon/ Is waning into evening, whisper soft!”, most people get off work late and lose their whole day just like McKay. He then reiterates that in line 9, “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine;”, like he wants to enjoy some of his own time just like others got to do during the day. McKay also describes how he feels after work, in line 8 “To rest thy tired hands and aching feet.”. McKay uses rhymes throughout the sonnet to let the reader gain a better feel about his emotions. McKay also uses question marks and exclamation points because he feels dreadful and hopelessness within himself. 

Then looking at McKay’s poem, “Outcast”, he gives the representation of what it is to be like the speaker in “The Tired Worker”. In this poem McKay focuses on how he is lost within himself. McKay uses the pronoun “I” in order to focus on the speaker. McKay also talks about how things in the world are holding him back from other things in life. For example in lines 6-9 “ But the great western world holds me in fee, / And I may never hope for full release/ While to its alien gods I bend my knee./ Something in me is lost, forever lost,” making it known that he is not himself when he has to give everything to this “western world”, his working class job. Being a black man during this time, you had no other choice but to give your all to the “western world”, in order to survive. In McKay’s last line he said “Under the white man’s menace, out of time”, ending with this line creates the tone for both sonnets. Working under people who do not see you as equal is not only degrading but also makes him feel the hopelessness and despair described in both sonnets.

Joseph Jordan

The Struggle Is Real

“The Tired Worker” tells a story of a tiring, nonstop lifestyle of a person whose every day life consists of providing with the little income they have. Similarly, “Outcast” describes the inner thoughts of a worker who shows awareness of being under the control of ‘the western world’, more specifically the big multimillion companies that ‘run’ the country. Both these poems tell the same story but from a different perspective because the central points lead back to the common man that feels they have no control of the world around them. Rather, they bring light to the reality of being caught up in a system they must follow without question just so they can provide and survive in society. Claude McKay’s poems “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker” both go hand in hand in relaying a very powerful message of what it means to feel hopelessness and despair. in a typical working class where no amount of accumulated money can bring comfort or relief.

Throughout “The Tired Worker”, the character uses many exclamation points to display frustration to the audience of how exhausting their every day life is. People don’t willingly focus their every day lives on working, its the helplessness of making money so they can ensure comfortable survival that forces them to stick with this cruel routine. McKay does a very good job in communicating this message because the first person point of view allows readers to step into this individual’s shoes and see the world with their lens. “Outcast’ was filled with various metaphors for the reader to pick through in order to truly understand the message of ‘hopelessness’. In the poem, McKay brings up “the western world” (Line 6) to explain why there is desperation and exhaustion, and who is actually responsible. To readers like me, the western world symbolizes the large companies who’s main focus relies on modernizing the world to make the most amount of money. Ideally, these companies hope to one day achieve globalization and make immense profit in the long run. In all of this chaos, common workers like those in “The Tired Worker” and “Outcast” get left behind or don’t receive the credit they deserve. They helped bring those companies to where they are today, and where they will be in the future, but unfortunately they all get neglected.

Claude McKay’s poems agree with the hopelessness and despair workers feel.

Simranpreet Kaur

An Acceptance of Fate

In Claude McKay’s “The Tired Worker,” the speaker describes someone going to bed after a long hard day at work, only to be re-awoken for another long, hard day. “Outcast,” on the other hand, describes the speaker’s hopelessness of being owned by “the great western world” and having no escape due to having been born “under the white man’s menace.” I believe “Outcast” does represent the hopelessness and despair of the working class speaker in “The Tired Worker.”

Both poems are 14 line sonnets. However, “The Tired Worker” has its turn, or volta, in line 11 with “But what steals…?” while “Outcast” follow the traditional Shakespearean route of having the volta in line 13 with “For I was born”. In the “The Tired Worker,” the speaker still maintains a somewhat defiant tone in saying things like “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine” and “Peace, O my rebel heart.” This is also reflected in McKay’s decision to place the volta in an unorthodox place. However, the tone shifts after the volta to one of despair over an inescapable fate, in this case having to return to work, with the final lines. On the other hand, the speaker in “Outcast” has resigned him/herself to his/her fate in saying “But the great western world holds me in fee, / And I may never hope for full release.” This poem delves into that despair that appears at the end of “The Tired Worker” and can be interpreted as telling how that same speaker feels during the day. The speaker in “Outcast” then concludes that “[they] must walk the way of life a ghost / Among the sons of earth, a thing apart,” indicating that they believe they will never been equal to the higher classes of people and that “the wretched day” in “The Tired Worker” will never be theirs. Mckay thus hammers these points home by following the rules and placing the volta in “Outcast” in line 13 where it is generally expected in the Shakespearean form. Thus, in a sense, “Outcast” can be read as a continuation of “The Tired Worker” after the speaker wakes up in the morning.

Evan He

Deprived of freedom

It is very unfortunate that in history Japanese Americans were deprived of their freedom and human right to life because the United States questioned their loyalty. The haiku I found most interesting was Neiji Ozawa’s. I truly felt like his haiku captured what the Japanese Americans felt while they were in internment camps. In his haiku he says “Sensing permanent separation” (line 1) this led me to believe that he was referring to how the Japanese Americans may have felt like they would not see life outside of these internment camps. He says in line 2 “as you left me in extreme heat” he is referring to how the people in the internment campus experience harsh weather conditions because these internment camps were usually located in deserts. Ozawa also describes the feeling of despair from looking out of a window. This line really caught my attention because the people in the internment camps most likely felt this feeling of hopelessness. But he also mentions how “there is always tomorrow” which brought up a sense of hope. Maybe the Japanese Americans felt hopeless some days but hopeful other days. In the last line he says “where do I discard my dreams?” which shows how everyone in the internment camps had hopes and dreams before they were forced into the camps. It represents how they had to face the reality of the situation they were put into. It shows how they didn’t know what to do with their hopes and dreams because they weren’t even sure if they would make it out of the camps. The poem itself is imagery because it allowed me to somewhat imagine what the poem was saying. The imagery successfully brought out what the Japanese Americans had experienced in the interment camps.

-Katherine Deras

Having hope in the hopelessness

Emanuel Jimenez

Does McKay’s “Outcast” represents the hopelessness and despair of the working-class speaker in “The Tired Worker.”?

I believe that Mckay’s “Outcast” truly does represents the hopelessness and despair of the working class speaker in “The Tired Worker”. First and for most there is a relation in the titles of these poems. A tired worker will most likely be an outcast. Not necessarily an outcast that has been exiled by society, or any harsh degree of any kind. But rather an Outcast in social events with friends or family. An Outcast to himself, because the speaker is so tired after working all day. During the Summer I worked full time as a cashier in Home Depot. I would be so tired that I would give away items for free but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. I would be so tired from working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, that I wouldn’t do anything other than work and sleep. I was becoming an outcast from my own life because I would no longer hang out with my friends nor visit my family because I was so tired. All I would do everyday was literally work and sleep.

Other than the obvious relation between the two titles, there is a lot of textual evidence that over laps the same general idea. For example the final two lines on both poems both overlap the same idea. In other words, they talk about two different things that coincide with each other.

“The Tired Worker” last two lines read,

Weary my veins, my brain, my life, – have pity! No! Once again the hard, the ugly city

The last two lines in “Outcast” read,

For I was born, far from my native clime,
Under the white man’s menace, out of time.

The lines from “The Tired Worker” talk about a pitiful life in a dreadful city. The lines from “Outcast” talk about a man being born away from his culture. Under the shadow of the white man, out of his time. Using historical context we know that Claude McKay is an African American himself. Which adds even more correlation between these finals lines. He was born in a city where the majority of people are were white. He was distant from his native culture. The poem “Outcast” definitely represents the hopelessness and the despair of the worker-class speaker in “The Tired Worker”

School for Grownups

Claude MacKay’s “The Tired Worker” and “Outcast” are both driven by the same idea that the working-class citizens are being stripped of their humanity by working the worst jobs imaginable, essentially giving their lives to their jobs for the lowest possible wage. In “The Tired Worker”, the speaker of the poem is done with their day and just wants to rest, especially considering that work days at the time this poem was written were considerably longer. With lines such as “O dawn!/ O dreaded dawn!/ O let me rest”, it can be said that the protagonist of this poem views work like a child views school; it is the worst possible place to spend the whole day at and it’s worse because they have to wake up early. They are still innocent to the idea of despair since they know school will eventually end and they just want to rest before going again.

The “innocence” found in “The Tired Worker” is then lost in “Outcast”, a poem in which the speaker is fed up with being a tired worker and instead speaks out against the system that has allowed for the burden of the workers to continue. Continuing the parallel of the child and school, “Outcast” reflects said child maturing and realizing school transforms into work, and they’re stuck their for the majority of their lives. The despair continues to build as the worker stays at their job; since they desperately need the money, they have no choice but to continue working.“Outcast” does a great job of “maturing” the idea of “The Tired Worker” in the sense that the protagonist realizes they will be a tired worker for the majority of their lives, in which case hopelessness and despair arise since workers feel as though they have no life left to live. Even if they save up, these working-class citizens will probably have little time left to truly enjoy it as most of their time has already passed by.

NO ESCAPE

Diane Tarabay-Rodriguez

McKay’s “Outcast” represents the hopelessness and despair of the working class speaker in “The Tired Worker”. The sonnet, Outcast, talks about feeling trapped in racist America with a tone of longing for better. The speaker wishes to be where his ancestors lives, only then would he feel free. He states, “something in me is lost, forever lost, some vital thing has gone out of my heart”(3). This line clearly illustrates feeling of despair. This is a full representation of how African Americans felt in the weatern world.

In “The tired worker”, the speaker expresses the same feelings of being trapped. The sonnet is about an exhausted worker that is thinking about the end of the work day. He wants to be released so that his body can finally rest. There is a lot of exclamation marks which work well to express the strong feelings on the subject.

Both poems talk about desire for something better. The poem “outcast” clearly shows why the working class speaker feels the way he does. Even though the speaker tries to look on the bright side of the situation, he ends up accepting his misfortune. 

Some may argue that the poem “Outcast” doesn’t represent the hopelessness and despair of the poem “The working class”. They belive that there is a lot more self motivation on “The working class” sonnet, but we can clearly see that those feelings of hope disappear by the end of the poem. They are both filled with feelings of being trapped with no hope of escaping. The only thing to do is to imagine and dream about being somewhere else, but in the end they are made to face reality.

Weary Body/Mind

Randy Hernandez

The poems “The Tired Worker” and “Outcast” by McKay Claude  are two poems reflecting on the common man in America. I believe the two poems describes the inner emotions and mental state of the lower class or working class in American society. This was a time where people of color worked very laborious and tedious job for next to nothing wages. The two poems share this common characteristics as its main focus throughout both poems share the real life experiences of those who are oppressed by the white man such as colored people and lower class individuals. This would lead me to conclude this idea of the poem “Outcast” represents the poem “The tired Worker” in the aspect of the speakers feeling hopelessness and despair.

Specifically, when both the speakers share the common idea of feeling isolated in the world they work for, how they feel strapped down to the working class and feel no freedom. In the poem “Outcast” the speaker states “I would go back to darkness and peace/ But the great western world holds me to fee” (line5-6). In this quote shows this aspect of the speaker feeling trapped in this country he lives in. The speaker feels the need to go back to his home land to feel content in his current life. The use of personifying the western world and describing it as the “great western world” has significance, the speaker acknowledges the benefits this world brings him. The world makes the speaker feel trapped which is emphasised by personifying the western world as to keep him contained, the speaker is able to show his sense of gratefulness. This world does have many downfalls but it’s still worth exploring the opportunities it can provide for the working class at times. 

Similarly, this is noted in the poem “The tried Worker” as the speaker shows his frustration of not feeling able to rest his body. The speaker can’t wait to put his body under the sheets to sleep to rest the physical body and mental mind. The poem also shows how the speaker dreads once he is awakened as the speaker says “O dawn! O dreaded dawn!”(line 12). The Speaker is showing the lack of rest and peace he feels every morning as he awakes for the day ahead. The speaker expresses his emotions through describing his body to the reader as the speaker says “ Be patient, weary body” (line 5) or says “To rest thy tired hands and aching feet” (line 8). These two examples are of the speaker describing his worn out body from the labor done in the day. The speaker goes to sleep every night with his body feeling weary and his feet and hands feeling worn out. The reader is given a deeper understanding of how the speaker feels every day after a hard day of work. One can picture a person’s body that is shown to be a hard working person but can see the physical and mental effects of it. There is some sense of peace being able to sleep at night. The speaker does acknowledge how they are given not enough rest but are able to receive some type of rest at night as their body is able to recover to some degree. 

Thus, both poems show this idea of being trapped in a world the speaker can’t escape. It’s an endless loop having to work and feeling these emotions of not having any hope and feeling desperate at times. When reading “The Tired Worker” the reader sees how the poem “Outcast” is a manifestation of it of what the speaker is expressing to the reader. This feeling of not seeing a future where they live has trapped them because of the free and empowered white man who controls their lives.