The Tropics in New York

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The Tropics in New York

• By Claude McKay

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Biography of Claude McKay

• Born in Jamaica, West Indies in 1889
• Educated by brother knowledgeable in English
  novels, poetry, and scientific texts
• At 20 published Songs of Jamiaca, recording them
  in dialect
• In 1917- published two sonnets, The Harlem
  Dancer and Invocation
• Wrote on the injustices of black life in America
  and about his Jamaican homeland

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Bio Contd.

• During his 20s, he developed an interest in
  Communism
• Lived in Harlem in 1934 after losing faith in
  Communism
• Converted to Catholicism after studying with the
  spiritual and political leaders of Harlem
• Gained respect of young black poet Langston
  Hughes
• McKay died in 1948.

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The Tropics in New York

• Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,   Coc
  oa in pods and alligator pears,And tangerines and
   mangoes and grape fruit,   Fit for the highest p
  rize at parish fairs,Set in the window, bringing 
  memories                     5   Of fruit-trees l
  aden by low-singing rills,And dewy dawns, and mys
  tical blue skies   In benediction over nun-like h
  ills.My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze
     A wave of longing through my body swept,       
        10And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, 
    I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

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Lines 1-4

• The first stanza is filled with the names of
  luscious, exotic fruit from a land other than
  America. It ends with a festive outdoor activity,
  a parish fair, which would have been a social
  event that gathered together a dispersed
  agricultural community. It is the sort of event
  that a stranger in a strange land would remember
  longingly.

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Lines 5-8

• The speaker mentions a window, which serves a
  dual purpose fruits bought at a market in the
  city would be put on a window sill to ripen, but
  the window is also a vehicle for the speakers
  memory to be cast outside, leading into this
  stanzas memories of the tropical landscape.

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Lines 9-12

• The warm nostalgia the speaker related toward
  his homeland in the first two stanzas now makes
  him sad in his longing for it. Not being able to
  live there, he feels helpless and alienated in
  his new surroundings. The hunger in line 11 ties
  the end of the poem to the luscious fruits at the
  beginning.

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Theme Culture Clash

• The title is a contradiction, a clash of
  landscapes. New York City with diverse immigrant
  cultures all living within a few city blocks of
  each other. Just as diverse were the fruits,
  vegetables, and other foods sold on the street or
  from merchants carts. Almost all of these foods
  are not native to our American culture, and in
  the second stanza the speaker reveals neither is
  he.
• Harsh contrast of what the speaker sees looking
  through his downtown apartment window and what
  the exotic fruit reminds him of trees laden by
  low-singing rills, / And dewy dawns, and mystical
  blue skies. Speaker finds himself in a new
  landscape but recalls old memories triggered by
  the discovery of this exotic fruit on his window
  sill.

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Theme Reminiscence and Memory

• Contrast between the exotic fruit set against the
  New York urban landscape inspires the speaker to
  reminisce and long for his homeland. Speaker
  looks out the window into what should be downtown
  New York, but instead sees scenes from his
  childhood in Jamaica.
• Memory can be triggered by many things the
  speaker of McKays poem fills his apartment with
  fragrant ginger and bright green bananas, sweet
  mangos, and tart pink grapefruit inside thick
  rinds. He fills his senses with the tropics. By
  the end of the second stanza the speaker is
  overcome with the weight of his emotions, and his
  memories flood him with longing.

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Theme Alienation and Loneliness

• A stranger in a strange landscape, the speaker
  first finds comfort in the familiar fruits he has
  placed on his windowsill to ripen, but soon he is
  overcome by the memories they evoke, as well as
  feelings of alienation and loneliness. Like the
  alligator pear strangely out of place against a
  backdrop of brownstone apartments, taxis, and
  fire escapes, the speaker is alien to his
  environment. McKay describes his longing as a
  hunger, connecting the theme of loneliness to the
  exotic foods that first triggered the powerful
  childhood memories.