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  • Essay / Analysis of the poem The Harlem Dancer

    During the Harlem Renaissance, when African Americans fought for civil rights and economic equality while emerging from black culture, arts, and music. Claude McKay wrote the Poem About the Harlem Dancer in 1922, this poem was written to explain some of the struggles that African Americans faced during the Harlem Renaissance. The poem explains how sometimes in life we ​​can be under the control of influences that occur in society and cause us to lose sight of our best intentions in certain situations. This poem is about a dancer in a bar in Harlem, the dancer dances in front of a crowd of men and women who act like a bunch of wild animals. Men don't focus on coming to the bar and having a good time, they focus on the dancer on stage. The dancer is battling a personal storm but doesn't show it in the way she moves on stage, she knows it's not like her to be in a place like this, but she can't break the hold . Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayIn the poem, the Harlem dancer in the front line, the setting is in a bar/nightclub, the bar is quiet, everyone is filling it. , in the fourth line you can tell how quiet the bar is because the author states that her body is swaying as if she is singing a calm and graceful song. In the second line we give a better description of the dancer: “Her perfect swing, half-clad; this indicates that the tone of this specific line suggests that the dancer is demeaning herself to be half-naked in front of strangers. Positive diction was presented when the author began the poem by introducing dancing as a young prostitute. During the Harlem Renaissance era, this was normal for prostitutes, but not for a lady of class, this type of behavior would destroy a woman's morals. In the third line, the dancer's voice is compared to flutes, the flutes give off a sound of innocents, of peace. , and calm. The flute is used as a symbol of the innocent, the dancer is in a bar half naked but her cry is somewhat innocent. This phrase is also a metaphor because it compares her to something gentle and graceful, even though she is in a place of drunkenness, screaming, and men acting like teenagers. Another metaphor is used when she says, "Blown by black players on a picnic day." When someone thinks of a picnic, they think of sunshine, love, happiness and innocence. This indicates that the song the dancer was singing must have been a very peaceful son because the picnic is happy and peaceful. Additionally, the word Black Players stood out as if it had no place in this situation. In the fifth line it says that the dancer danced with grace and calm, which indicated what type of performer she was, she knew how to stay at peace in a place of chaos. . In lines six, it talks about how the light hangs freely around his form, making the atmosphere of the bar dark. No one can be seen, just the dancer on stage with the hanging light showing her form. The climax begins in this section as the audience begins to go wild as soon as the light hits the figure of the dancer. Light can also be a symbol of the dancer, when we think light we think light, a passage to see and shed light on our situations. In the seventh line, the author talks about how proud the dancer seemed – swinging his palm trees when I think of palm trees, I think of magnificent trees, places.