18 pages • 36 minutes read
Heritage
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Grief and Anger
The last two stanzas of the poem reveal that the speaker’s main reasons for asking “What is Africa to me?” are grief and anger, caused by an awareness of the suffering Black people experienced, from being captured and abducted in Africa to being sold into slavery and abused in antebellum (before the Civil War) America, to various forms of segregation and racist discrimination ever since the Civil War. That suffering is the speaker’s heritage in a way that is more immediate and impactful than the vague knowledge of African landscapes and jungle animals.
However, the speaker has been socialized into suppressing how that heritage makes them feel, or perhaps suppressing these feelings is a defense mechanism enabling them to live a civilized life as a Black man in a historically racist society. Instead, they fantasize about a primal Africa with wild cats “[c]rouching in the river reeds, / Stalking gentle flesh that feeds / By the river brink” (Lines 35-37) and “the savage measures of / Jungle boys and girls in love” (Lines 50-51). Unlike them, the speaker has been tamed, unable to freely and passionately express their needs and desires, reduced to passive contemplation rather than action.
Nevertheless, their grief and anger are real, bubbling just below the surface. The speaker thought that “[t]imber […] was wet” (Line 122), or that civilized life had fully suppressed these feelings, but in fact such feelings burn the speaker inside, maybe more so precisely because of suppressing them. If they should let the feelings loose, that could lead to a destructive conflagration, which the speaker fears as it would cause unbearable anguish or because it might make them violently act—like those jungle animals. So, the speaker is caught in a bind: On the one hand, they are unhappy about their civilized self-policing and passive indignation, but on the other, they are terrified by the possibility of shrugging off civilized manners and allowing their feelings to guide their actions.
Christianity and Race
The speaker is Christian—“I belong to Jesus Christ” (Line 90)—but their “conversion came high-priced” (Line 89) because it removes them from the faith of their ancestors—“[h]eathen gods are naught to me” (Line 92)—but also because it commits them to “humility” (Line 91) and “patience” (Line 111). They imagine a Black Christ with “dark despairing features” (Line 109) and “dark rebellious hair (Line 110), whose patience would not disallow occasional outbursts of anger (Lines 111-13). Black Christ would be more attuned to Black suffering, and the speaker’s heart, which falters at the alter of white Jesus (Lines 99-100), would be more easily guided by Black Christ’s “precedent of pain” (Line 103). The speaker would relate more fully to Christ’s suffering: “Surely then [the speaker’s] flesh [would know / [Christ’s flesh] had borne a kindred woe” (Lines 105-06). That Christ, like any victim of slavery or racism, would find that his “patience wavers” (Line 111) and “touches / Quick and hot, of anger, rise / To smitten cheek and weary eyes” (Lines 112-14). So, the speaker admits: “Lord, I fashion dark gods, too” (Line 107), not so different from “heathen gods / Black men fashion” in Africa “[i]n a likeness like their own” (Lines 86-88). Specific religious beliefs may differ, but the need to imagine a divinity which feels kindred to the human believer is universal.
The Unconscious
The speaker of “Heritage” is a contemplative person, prone to self-reflection. Probably, they explicitly think about their cultural and psychological heritage, but they cannot do that all the time. It is on the level of the unconscious that this heritage most powerfully impacts them. That is what they mean by saying they can “find no peace / Night or day, no silent release / From the unremittent beat / Made by cruel feet / Walking through my body’s street” (Lines 64-67). These are the feet of wild jungle cats and the beat of native drums that resonate in the speaker’s bloodstream (“my body’s street”) or metaphorically in the unconscious. It is there that these sounds and images are “[t]reading out a jungle track” (Line 70); this “jungle” has more to do with the speaker’s own repressed feelings and impulses than with any real African jungle.
This is also evident in the second stanza, where the images of African fauna and flora lead to the speaker’s reflection on their own Blackness—“my somber flesh and skin” (Line 25)—as a source of pride, distress, and joy (Lines 23-24). In other words, it is racial difference and racism that motivate the speaker’s thinking about Africa, which stands as a capacious symbol for freedom that preceded slavery and exuberance that preceded civilized tameness. While the speaker claims they think about Africa only on occasion, the history and legacy of slavery and racism are a constant burden in their unconscious. If they allowed such ideas to be equally pervasive in their conscious mind, if “the dark blood dammed within” (Line 26) were to “burst the fine / Channels of the chafing net” (Lines 28-29) and overpower the defense mechanisms of their conscious self, they would drown in their internal flood of grief and anger.
Unlock all 18 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Countee Cullen
