Who Is Countee Cullen On His Blindness

Cullen is hopeful to get to a place where people of different races will be able to look at others without prejudice and discrimination. However, the poem “Incident” is of a less positive tone. She expresses her experience in a shocked manner, saying, a boy stuck his “tongue out and, called, [her] ‘Nigger’,” (Cullen 8). She was so shocked that “From May until December; .../… of all the things that happened... /… that’s all [she could remember” in Baltimore (Cullen 10-12). At the young age that she was at, it is surprising and upsetting to her to be discriminated against for no reason.

Cullen’s poem is based off of God’s actions while McKay’s poem has no reference to God. Religious figures have been an important component of human lives for centuries and it was very important to African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. This was the case for Cullen’s poem, “I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,” (1). Right in the beginning of his poem, he mentions some of his many feelings towards God. He continues to refer to God several times throughout his poem. The way he includes God in his poem suggests that God is the focal point of his problems. McKay’s poem, however, focuses the causes of his problems on something much different than a god or religion. In his mind, the source of his problem doesn’t come from God, but from white Americans. I think it is very interesting how opposite Cullen’s and McKay’s views on religion are. On one side, Cullen is a typical African American living in the Harlem Renaissance, using faith as an escape and reason for his troubles. McKay also shares a common characteristic of African Americans at this time which is to put the blame for his issues on white Americans. Cullen’s and McKay’s views on religion differed

     Throughout these chapters we see many portrayals of God’s character: The destroyer, the ever-judging, a God with expectations, a God that grieves, feels pain, repents, a God that demands justice; a self-evaluating, ruling and omnipotent God whom also passes on saving grace to the deserving.

The central theme of both John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill” and Jonathan Edward’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, is the prospect of religion in one’s everyday life influencing their future. In order to build up their ideas about acting in a way that pleases the Lord, both these authors use repetition, diction, allusions, and metaphors as a way to build momentum in their speech as they allude to teachings of the bible and their diction install a notion of uncertainty. However, while Winthrop uses his notion of uncertainty to give the audience a sense of security, in their endeavors to the Americas, with the prospect of religion, Edwards does the opposite and makes the audience fear God even more as he talks about his

Cullen wrote more conventionally which is important to the future generations who may comes across The New Negro. His topics focused on the black experience and his poetry was more traditional and soulful which he strongly believed to be the best way of writing. This what made him different from Hughes, Hurston, Toomer and others, who initially focused more on the folk tradition as their signature style. Furthermore, Cullen differed from his peers by defying the ideology of remaining within his race poetically. It was not in fact denying his "blackness" or African American Heritage but bringing to recognition his right to create ideas and works that does not necessarily have to deal with race. He acknowledged that he was Black, just like the

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

“Either we must say that God is not wholly good, and that he permits or is even the author of evil. Or we must say that God is not omnipotent, and although he is wholly good and would prevent evil if he could, he is powerless to stop it.” (Fitzgerald 340).

Unlike Naylor, Cullen never identifies the sex of the black child in his poem. Perhaps Cullen renders the child in his poem genderless to give the child a more universal standing; perhaps he leaves the child genderless in order to focus on the more important fact that the child, whether male or female, sees no difference between him- or herself and the other boy until the “Baltimorean" boy calls him/her "nigger" (3).

The legacy Countee Cullen, constructed, has made one of the biggest impacts on the era of segregation. The message Cullen was capable of imposing through poetry to all races makes you believe he was destined to be the best. The struggles the African American, race was experiencing is exposed through Countee Cullen’s, work. He brought new respect and awareness to the black race; through poems like “Heritage”, “Fruit of The Flower,” and “Incident”. The fact Cullen was educated by whites yet, his ideas were shaped by black ideas made him capable of appealing to both races. This made him much of an economic figure.

In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Jonathan Edwards uses literacy devices, especially metaphors and similes in order to convey God’s wrath on sinners. These metaphors and similes are imperative for driving emotion onto the readers and listeners. Edwards wants to strike fear onto the listeners by sending his message from God.

Countee Cullen and his poem “Yet Do I Marvel” talks about the relationship between God and man but the main point of the poem is his position in the world as a being black and being a black poet. His skin color is placed

When he is writing the text Dubois explores the reasons why he is equal to whites. The

Cullen utilizes imagery throughout the poem, to illuminate the racism African Americans endured and impact racism carries. The speaker in the poem is an eight year old in Baltimore. In the first stanza, Cullen describes the child as “heart-filled, head-filled with glee.” This image portrays the speaker as innocent and joyful. Then the speaker notices a boy staring at him, the speaker believes there’s little difference between them, that the kid “was no whit bigger.” The speaker gets a rude awakening after the boy “poked out his tongue.” A seemingly playful meaningless gesture is met with the boy calling the speaker “N****r.” Cullen contrasts these two experiences because it depicts how racism comes out of nowhere and effects those you wouldn’t expect. The last stanza, the speaker “saw the whole Baltimore. The image of seeing is not just visual, but a metaphor for the loss of innocence where the speaker now is exposed to the hate. Cullen masterfully uses imagery so that readers understand the incredible impact that words have, especially when used for hate.

“‘Faith! Faith!’ cried the husband. ‘Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!’” (Hawthorne 1297) These were the words expressed by Young Goodman Brown during the evil baptisms. Whether Goodman Brown was speaking to himself or his pleasant wife Faith, it is easily seen that there is a definite need of Faith and God to be saved from the “Wicked One”.

J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind – in Chapter 8: ‘You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’”