The Twins of Disregarded Capitalism

By Mitaya La Pierre

McKay’s “The Tired Worker” tells a story we are all familiar with; an exhaustion that complies with the typical hustle of our days. The work that stains our fingers and wears down our minds; is beautifully portrayed in this sonnet. But there’s a question to be asked here; what about the poem “Outcast”? And what does that poem have to do with Mc Kay’s other poem; “The Tired Worker”? Well more than one may think.

In the first line of “Outcast” we get a description of the speakers background.

“For the dim regions whence my father’s came

My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.” 

The first lines of this sonnet provide a compelling point of view. Where the worker in “The Tired Worker” shows a relatable disdain for the working day; we can find a bit of under surface finding with outcast. This character hates being ‘chained’ by their job, but maybe there’s something not so funny or relatable about it when spoken of in Outcast.

“-Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;

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,

And I may never hope for full release

While to its alien gods I bend my knee.”

In lines 3-8, it shows me that he isn’t just talking about not wanting to go to work, like in the other poem, but that he is also trying to go back to something else. By working, and applying himself constantly to society, this torn worker has lost sight of himself. He is no longer his own; his soul sings jungle songs, his fathers came from dim regions; he is no longer himself but of the capital world. Yeah sure, no one likes to get up for work in the morning, but outcast shows that for the tired worker its more than that! Claude McKay coming from a black background knows the effects of racism and slavery first hand. For the speaker its not just work but, the bondage of it that is so personal to him. Because of the western world, because of white nationalism, and capitalism; he is not just responsible for being a cog in the machine, he is forced into it. This poem providing a more in depth, and tragic understanding of what it actually means to work as a black man in this white dominated industry.

Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen

Both The Tired Worker and Outcast are sonnets easily linked to Claude Mckay’s Jamaican (and by extension African) heritage. While The Outcast describes the general conditions and events that led to societal and racial stratification in the early 20th century United States, The Tired Worker serves as a manifestation of this situation, one that is communicated through the plight of a single worker who embodies the downtrodden and weary spirit of the working class.

Outcast begins with metaphorical imagery. The speaker discusses “My spirit, bondaged by the body” to express a relationship between mundane and spiritual freedom. If one’s body is free, his spirit is bound to follow suit; however, the inverse is also true, and the speaker has been wrested from his homeland – symbolized by “forgotten jungle songs” – and manacled (in both both body and spirit) into a new order by “the great western world”.  These “jungle songs” are closely linked with the “rebel  heart” mentioned in The Tired Worker. Each is a metaphor for a spirited culture lost in transit across the Atlantic and stomped out by racism, oppression, and slavery. The very mention of this spirit, however, indicates its resilience; the “dim regions from whence my fathers came” have not and will not be forgotten by the speakers in either poem.

The poems’ situations test this spirit to its breaking point. Outcast establishes the speaker’s subservient perspective, addressing his masters with the “alien gods” metaphor to whom he “bends (his) knee”. The use of “alien” strictly divides the speaker from the alien gods who are revealed to manifest in “the white man’s menace”. The speaker implies such a large cultural difference between whites and blacks that they cannot be considered of the same world. This other party – this ruling oppressive class above – is also represented in The Tired Worker. The same “alien gods” exist to rule this speaker, claiming his days in eternally cyclic labor. His life is dichotomized into day and night – metaphors for service and respite that are juxtaposed throughout the poem. “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine” expresses the unrelenting fatigue of the speaker. The only comfort afforded to the him is that of a personified “tender sleep” that “folds me to thy breast”. Unfortunately, “dreaded dawn” stains the “gray clouds” of night with the “red…wine” of sunrise and perpetuates the torturous labor performed by the speaker.

Outcast provides explanation for the bleak outlook of The Tired Worker. Reading The Tired Worker alone, one questions the context of the plight as well as what led to his situation. The worker’s abysmal state of servitude originates in the lines of Outcast: a poem in which “something in me is lost” (this pertains to the speaker’s loss of racial identity and spirit – one that he has been robbed of by his masters). Divided, captive, and lacking this aforementioned spirit, it is natural to slink into the servitude portrayed in The Tired Worker. By pairing the complementary poems, Mckay establishes a cause and effect relationship. The Tired Worker is the current subservient situation of the African diaspora (with which McKay sympathizes and participates), while Outcast is a cause for the dire straits in which the worker (who represents the descendants of African people) finds himself.

Slave Ship Transports Across the Atlantic. Inhumanely cramped quarters, the prevalence of disease, and little to no provisions led to the death of many slaves during voyages. This embodies the breaking of the  African spirit  that is discussed in both The Tired Worker and Outcast.