20 pages • 40 minutes read
Claude McKayJoy in the Woods
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Ballads of Lenin” by Langston Hughes (1933)
An example of how the Harlem Renaissance was influenced by the working-class vision of Communism as practiced in Russia, this poem, among many Communist-leaning poems penned by Hughes, one of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance, celebrates the idealism of the deceased Vladimir Lenin. The poem, although a bit sketchy with history, depicts different workers from different ethnicities paying homage at the marble tomb of one of Communism’s most influential philosophers.
“Talking Union” by Pete Seeger (1941)
McKay’s poem is often heralded as one of the earliest working-class poems in the American canon. Its influence can be seen in the rise of proletariat poems (most set to music) that appeared during the Depression. Here, folk poet icon Pete Seeger crafts a blues standard to encourage workers to rise up and join unions as a way to preserve their dignity. By comparison, McKay’s poem lacks this resilient energy—his worker must be content to dream while he sacrifices his very soul to the company. “You’ll win,” Seeger tells the workers, “take it easy, but take it.”
“The Tired Worker” Claude McKay (1919)
Written at the same time as “Joy in the Woods,” this poem, a classically crafted sonnet, depicts the exhausted worker dragging himself home after a thankless day on the job. The worker yearns only for the oblivion of sleep. Because the speaker here dreads the dawn and the return to work, the poem can be read as a kind of prequel to the worker heading off to work and dreaming of a beautiful world he can never experience.
Further Literary Resources
“Black and White and Shot through with Red: Claude McKay Brings the Harlem Renaissance to the Soviet Union” by Brian Benoit (2018)
A historical look into McKay’s exploration of the idealism of Communism as a way to help alleviate the social ills of racism. The article outlines how the energy and daring of the Harlem Renaissance responded to the energy and daring of the Communist vision. The article shares McKay’s affiliation with several underground Communist publications both in New York and in London. The article also includes copious quotes from McKay’s essays on the potential of Communism to address the inequities of consumer capitalism.
“Claude McKay’s Adaptation to Audience” by A. L. McLeod (1980)
A pioneering study of how Claude McKay, in his embrace of the philosophy of Communism, used the rhetoric (and the promise) of the controversial philosophy to express his own concern for the plight of the working class. Recognizing early on (as so many American artists would only recognize much later), McKay understood poetry that pushed the Communist agenda would find entrenched resistance in America. Thus, McKay used the argument of Communism but filtered it through his compassion for the disenfranchised. The articles use “Joy in the Woods” as an example of this adaptation of Communism to America.
“Claude McKay: A Poet, an Activist, Communist” by Nick Clark (2020)
Handsomely illustrated with photos of McKay on stage proselyting the Communism vision, the article explores what a generation of McKay scholars and readers tried to ignore. In embracing his work, poetry and nonfiction alike, as an important voice in the emergence of Black literature defined by the Harlem Renaissance, these readers have slighted or deliberately ignored the reality of McKay’s endorsement of Communism as the only way to address the problem with racism. Racism, for McKay, was centrally not about hate or bigotry but rather about the wildly disproportionate distribution of money in capitalist America. Fix that, McKay argues, and racism will be a thing of the past.
Listen to the Poem
Marketed by Films on Demand, “Harlem Voices: The Poetry of Langston Hughes and Claude McKay” is a 14-segment documentary on these two titanic figures in the Harlem Renaissance. Each segment, roughly two or three minutes, profiles a different aspect of these two poets and their tireless efforts to promote the avant-garde work of Black writers, painters, composers, and photographers in the heyday of the movement. Segment 8 is devoted to “Joy in the Woods,” and the segment includes a partial clip of McKay’s own reading of the poem. He delights in modulating his voice (particularly the breaks in the lines). His voice creates the comparisons between the living death of the city and the idyllic world of nature the speaker conjures.
Related Titles
By Claude McKay
