Both of McKay’s poems—“Outcast” and “The Tired Worker”—though not necessarily speaking on the same issues when read in isolation, can be narratively reconstructed to build off one another in creating an overwhelming feeling of dread and despondence for the working class when correlatively read side by side.
A surface read of both poems would gather that the “Outcast” refers to race while “The Tired Worker” refers to the working class’ exhaustion of their daily repetition. However, when tied together, one can view the “Outcast” as adding to the tone of despair in “The Tired Worker.” One thing that ties both poems together is their identical rhyme scheme of ABAB—a rhyme scheme that isn’t consistently used throughout the collection. The fact that both are written with the same rhyme scheme as well as the fact that both are written with a rhyme scheme add to the repetitiveness that the working class faces under “the great western world” (“Outcast” line 6) which may be equated to capitalism.
Both speakers in the poem shout out for relief from their woes, such as when the speaker in “The Tired Worker” shouts “O let me rest / Weary my veins, my brain, my life! Have pity!” (lines 12-13) and when the speaker in the “Outcast” claims that they walk as a ghost with something “forever lost” from their being (line 9). Not only does the rhyme scheme fit how the working class must repeat the same schedule in order to survive under capitalism, but it also represents their constant, desperate cries for relief while being unable to truly escape. The rhyme scheme does not break or allow them any alleviation from the chains that restrict them.
In addition, the sonnet form of both poems limits the speakers to a cage of fourteen lines; they cannot break free of their system (the sonnet or metaphorically, capitalism) no matter how hard they try, so they are bound to continue down their spiral of repetition (the uniform ABAB rhyme scheme) until the end of their life (the end of the poem).
Like this, reading poems in isolation versus reading poems within a certain context can change the entire meaning or further enhance a poem’s meaning, even if it takes away from the poet’s original intent (as we saw with McKay’s “Should We Die” when read in solitary and when read in the context of The Liberator).
Caitlyn Klemm
Introduction to Poetry 