A Cogs Fate

Outcast and The Tired Worker by Claude McKay are two strong and intricate poems that stand perfectly on their own, however, when the two are read together we can uncover a strengthened main theme and a heavy correlation between the two literary works. With the historical context of both works being written within the 1920s, we see the story of exploited and overworked employees, victims of the situation around them, and the people in power above them. 

The Tired Worker revolves around the speaker, as he waits till the final hours of the day so that he may be able to return back home to rest. Allowing him the opportunity of momentary peace, as he recovers from the back-breaking and overly demanding daily work. As he begins to regain himself and appreciate the joy in his rest he is rudely awakened by the morning sun as it rises again, and is filled with dread at knowing he has to return to the grueling work cycle he’s destined for. The speaker notes the difference between the two settings and notably points out the lack of autonomy he has over the work he does “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine” with his time off the clock being the only time he has over himself, as during the day he is nothing more than another cog in the machine kept running by those in power. 

While Outcast holds a more somber tone with a main emphasis on the inescapable fate of death, it can be argued that it’s a much more positive work. As the speaker talks about his body and soul eventually departing from the living world he notes that there is peace in this process, as he returns to the darkness, but in doing so is able to rest eternally. More importantly, however, the speaker notes that his death removes him from the chains placed onto him by the “great western world” as he’s forced to work, and liberated from “the white man’s menace” as he escapes through death. 

Together the poems tell the story of an abusive and exploitative system, one that takes in workers and uses them to their fullest extent for the sake of maximizing productivity with no care for the burden this has on its employees. We get a closer view of this system from the perspective of one of its victims, constantly haunted by the daily work cycle, even through the little time he gets to rest, knowing that he’s doomed to return back the next day. Destined to this cycle until the day of his death, when he will finally be freed of his daily torment and separated from his overseers and be met with the peace that’s been robbed from him his whole life. 

– Eduardo Ojeda Jr

The endless cycle

The lives we live here in America seems to revolve around working and gaining money to live comfortable lives. We go to school to gain an education to work towards getting a job where we will work out whole lives and get paid to pay off the things we need to live comfortably and happily. In Claude McKay’s two poems ‘The Tired Worker’ and ‘Outcast’ he displays the actions of working tirelessly every day and the feelings of exhaustion and hopelessness that come with it. These two poems tie together so well to show how it feels to be forced into slaving away for the rich and the people who govern us just at a chance to live a life where we can have food on the table and a roof over our heads.

Starting with his poem, “The Tired Worker”, Mckay states things such as “Be patient, weary body, soon the night/Will wrap thee gently in her sable sheet,/And with a leaden sigh thou wilt invite/To rest thy tired hands and aching feet”. He separates his body and personifies it, as if it is a child longing for rest, which emphasizes the longing as well as innocence, informing the reader that the body didn’t do anything to deserve to be pushed to complete exhaustion. It makes the reader feel pity on the body as if it was a child being forced into labor. He ends the poem with “O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest/Weary my veins, my brain, my life! Have pity!/No! Once again the harsh, the ugly city.” to show that the work day comes again before there is any chance to rest and regain any energy. Showing the constant cycle of the working class. Also, I think it is really interesting how ‘The tired worker” is a sonnet with the exact rhyming scheme, it adds to the feeling of being stuck in the same cycle and constant pattern. Outcast ties so perfectly with this poem by displaying more of the emotions and feelings towards the endless days of work rather than the cycle itself displayed in ‘The Tired Worker”. In Outcast McKay states, “My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs./I would go back to darkness and to peace,/But the great western world holds me in fee,” which shows a desperate longing for his home in Jamaica, where he felt more free and at peace, yet he seems to be stuck in America. The word ‘fee’ is also very important because the only reason people work is to gain money, by McKay claiming America ‘holds me in fee’ it claims the only reason he is staying in this hopeless cycle is due to the money that he needs to survive. The next quote that stuck out to me was when he claimed “Something in me is lost, forever lost,/Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,”. By working in America and being trapped in the working class, I feel that he is claiming that he has lost possibly the carefree and joyous part of himself that didn’t believe all there was to life was work. The rhyming scheme follows the sonnet and the vulta is very strong when he claims, “For I was born, far from my native clime,/Under the white man’s menace, out of time.” which displays that he did not want this, yet he cannot beat the white men who are oppressing him and many others under their rule and how they continue to force this cycle onto the working class people of the world.

Emily Mayo

The Pains of the Trapped

I feel a little on the fence about the connection between the two poems The Tired Worker and Outcast by Claude McKay. Both poems show a sense of alienation and affliction to pain between the two speakers: The speaker in The Tired Worker states “Weary my veins, my brain, my life! Have Pity!\ No! Once again the harsh, ugly city” (Lines 13-14), denoting the tired body and mind of the overworked working class man. In Outcast, the pain and alienation of the speaker is also reflected toward the end of the poem in the lines “And I must walk the way of life a ghost\ Among the sons of earth, a thing apart;” (Lines 11-12).

However, the speaker in outcast refers to the pain being due to the isolation created racially, with him being an immigrant and unwanted in the white man’s world that is the west: “For I was born, far from my native clime,\ Under the white man’s menace, out of time.” (Lines 13-14). This is where the disconnect between the two speakers is the most prominent and why I remain unsure about the connection between the two. It is clear that both of the speakers tackle inequity in the west, with the speaker in The Tired Worker finding rest only in sleep as they work all day just to survive for next to nothing while the speaker in Outcast instead reflects on the struggle of surviving in the white man’s world in the west, saying that he must comply to outside forces in the line “While to its alien gods I bend my knee” (Line 8).

There is most certainly overlap between the two speakers, and there most certainly existed people that fit the description of both speakers, with people worked to death to survive while that struggle is only amplified by racial discrimination. However, there are some places where the messaging between the two speakers is focused too heavily on particular ideas, such as working in the city in The Tired Worker or the loss of cultural identity through conformity in Outcast. Both of these poems were certainly written in reflection to McKay’s life and experiences, so there is a clear connection between the two speakers. However, the two speakers reflect on systemic issues that attack different sections of living that are separate but instead collide within individuals. The choice to meet these two systems of inequality into the lens of one individual is largely dependent on the reader’s interpretation of the systems that McKay is critiquing, so I am unsure to fully support that connection or not.

Sky Miller

No Voice of The Working Class

McKay’s poem “The Tired Worker” describes the difficulties of the working class of the harsh  treatment and long hours of work, and the only thing that powers through the terrible conditions  is the waiting for nightfall to come. However, as “The Tired Worker” demonstrates the difficulty of working class, but comparing the poem to McKay’s other work “Outcast” that show the sense of unworthiness and hopelessness, but through analyzing the work, the main idea does not really transition to the working class depicted in “The Tired Worker.”

 McKay utilizes the sonnet form of the 14 lines with ending the Volta of the poem that depicts the people’s treatment of work within the city that allows them to be abused shown through the blood in their vein, brain and life of the speaker. With also the use of the rhyme scheme, McKay emphasizes the importance of night for the working class as it is their time to be freed through the difficult work and long hours where night allows them to be at peace. By looking at the end rhyme which could pick out a few significant words, from “moon” symbolizing the night after a stressful work to which is the one thing they look forward to. The speaker continues to explain, “the night is mine / Come, tender sleep, and fold me to my breast” (Line 9-10), as the speaker  describes the importance of night and the should be close to their chest. 

On the other side, taking a close look and analyzing McKay’s poem “Outcast” proceeds with having the sense of unworthiness and hopelessness, but it does not demonstrate the voice of the working class from the other poem. McKay continues to use the sonnet form, but the end rhyme is not significant compared to the other poem. Through simple aspects, you can pull out different ideas that could relate to the other poem. The speaker begins, “For the dim regions whence my fathers came” (Line 1), to which describing the “dim regions” that could be shown as the late hours of work as the speaker’s father comes back home. The poem continues, “I would go back to darkness and to peace” (Line 5), as the connotation of darkness would define it as the dark of night which finally allows the speaker peace. However, the poem does not represent the working class through working struggles and economics, but McKay presents a more racial idea of the community. The speaker mentions, “For I was born, far from may native clime, / Under the white man’s menace, out of time” (line 13-14), as it includes the “white man’s menace” as the idea of the racial impact of being disregard and them being the burden to the rest. 

Naraint Catalan Rios

Dreading For Tomorrow

The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s & 1930’s was a cultural reset with the struggles the working lower classes faced. In Claude McKay, ‘Harlem Shadow‘ it descriptively shows how living during the Harlem Renaissance was. Claude McKay’s “Outcast” extensively represents the amount of hopelessness and despair of the working-class in “The Tired Worker” through the use of alliteration and imagery in both poems.

In the book, the poem ‘The Tired Worker’, “O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest / Weary my veins, my brain, my life! Have pity! / No! Once again the harsh, the ugly city!” (McKay, lines 12-14) The poet uses alliteration by starting off his sentences with the word “O”, McKay does this to show the speaker is dreading for tomorrow and is going restless throughout the Harlem. The author paints the picture of living in the Harlem Renaissance, through the use of a sad and angry tone of living in that “ugly” society. Tracing back to the tittle, where the poet titles it “The Tired Worker”, this statement is clearly true throughout the poem, showing the worn out workers. In “Outcast”, “Some vital thing has gone out of my heart, / And I must walk the way of life of a ghost” (McKay lines 10-11) McKay uses the alliteration of the word “I” to show what the speaker and most of the working class’ journey living through the struggle of the Harlem Renaissance. Specifically in this line of losing yourself, where the speaker compares himself to living life as a ghost and losing part of their heart. Where in the title the speaker compares theirselves to an outcast. The despair and hopelessness the working-class has faced doing the Harlem Renaissance shines thoroughly in McKay’s poems.

Throughout the extensive amount of poems McKay wrote in the book ‘Harlem Shadows’, “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker” clearly depicts the fight of the working-classes had to face in order to live during the Harlem Renaissance. The hopelessness of feeling tired and waiting for tomorrow to come and the despair of staying connected to oneself, where it’s common to lose yourself and becoming an outcast of their own soul.

~Roma Ventura

Well Yes, But Actually No?

Both Claude McKay’s “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker” represent the hopelessness and despair of the working-class speaker; the answer is the same but how it was reached varies. Yes, both “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker” deal with hopelessness and despair, but in different ways. “The Tired Worker” states “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine; \ Come tender sleep, and fold me to thy breast” while “Outcast” is similar “I would go back to darkness and to peace”. “The Tired Worker” is about being overworked, underpaid, and always looking forward to the sun’s setting beneath the horizon. “Outcast” on the other hand has that same idea, but takes it a step farther and yearns for the old world their family knew before arriving in western civilization. Contrastingly, “The Tired Worker” discusses a “harsh, ugly city” with a sort of ambiguity, blaming civilization as a whole for the shackles that hold the speaker. “Outcast” is blunt and direct with “For I was born, far from my native clime, \ Under the white man’s menace, out of time” the speaker (assuming both poems have the same speaker) is no longer willing to beat around the bush on this topic: it’s not only the civilization but it is white men and the civilization they built and control that holds them down.

Abigail Raven

All Too Harsh

While I do admit that I have changed my mind a few times during the writing process of this blog, I do have to agree that “Outcast” represents the hopelessness and despair of the working-class speaker that we observe in “The Tired Worker.” Given that this blog post is viewable by more than just my fellow classmates, it is important to recognize our poet who wrote both “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker”, which are from a collection by Claude McKay in his work titled Harlem Shadows (pgs. 44, 45). There are so many things I can say about McKay’s life, everything from how he was born in Jamaica and moved to the U.S. in 1912. From this time onward, McKay attends school, moves to New York, gets married, gets divorced, and starts publishing his poetry. By the time that McKay has published his collection, Harlem Shadows, America has seen a violent reaction against communism, called The Red Scare (I’ve attached a link to a brief history of The Red Scare). From everything within McKay’s life, and the life of Americans experiencing events in history like the Red Scare, it is no wonder that his work consists of very common parallels with the real world. 

Getting back to the pieces of McKay’s work that we will be looking at, “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker”, we see a correlation behind the type of person that McKay is trying to reach as an audience, the working-class. “Outcast” takes a reminiscing tone, one that looks back to the days where “My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs” and where there was peace. This 14 lined sonnet carries a hopeless theme, which is shown when McKay ends the two last lines. McKay says, 

“For I was born, far from my native clime,

Under the white man’s menace, out of time.”

This character and voice that we as the audience hear them say shows how they feel they are out of time. What this likely means is that because they are away from the place they were born, there is no time to go back now that they have built a new life here in America. This idea carries us back over to “The Tired Worker” who’s character very much experiences the hardship of the working-class. Similarity I want to observe the last two lines of this 14 lined sonnet,

“Weary my veins, my brian, my life! Have pity!

No! Once again the harsh, harsh city.” 

Both of the last two lines of “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker” resemble existence, from birth and the pasting of time, to veins, life and a city that makes the life that they live all too harsh. In all, Outcast represents the hopelessness and despair of the character who has come to this country to have a better life but missing home, as they are now a working-class person living in a harsh city in “The Tired Worker.”

Anne K. Anderson

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

The Exhaustion of Day to Day Life

Both of McKay’s poems,“The Tired Worker” and “Outcast” work alongside each other representing  the same idea of the working class. In the poem “The Tired Worker”, we can sense a feeling of fatigue and exhaustion. This comes from the way the words carry each other and the way that they flow. They are words that when reading them feel light and soft in a way that even by just reading it the reader also feels tired and exhausted (at least I did in a way). Within this poem we can see that the speaker refers to the anguish and exhaustion of the working day “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine” and how the only time they have to themselves is the night in which they can finally take a break and relax. Something that is similar between both poems is the reference to the speaker’s soul, the working day and relaxing night. I am neutral to the idea of the poem “Outcast” representing both the hopelessness and dispairity of the middle working class in the other poem “The Tired Worker”. I think that they both are about the same topics and themes which make them similar in many ways. In the poem, “Outcast” we can also sense a feeling of fatigue and exhaustion. However, it is more about the physical feelings than the emotional and mental ones. In the first poem, “The Tired Worker” it talks more about the soul and the emotions that the speaker feels on the day to day actions. As for the other poem it’s more about the physical things like the lips, knees, and heart. Which is why I am neutral and wouldn’t be able to choose between them. 

Sandra Landa-Sanchez

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