Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay Research Assignment

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Alliteration, repetition, and assonance in “Harlem Shadow”
“Harlem Shadow” is one of the greatest pieces of literature that portrays the Negro literary of the Renaissance. For instance, the form he employs is a three Venus-And-Adonis, which exhibit a six-line stanza arranged in the iambic pentameter with the rhyme of ababcc; this was a deviation from the English sonnet that usually has three quatrains followed by one couplet. In this perspective, his work “Harlem Shadow” displays the skill and awareness of the Elizabethan verse forms that are not common in modern poetry in America. This essay demonstrates that “Harlem Shadow” poem is an expression of McKay’s sympathy for the individuals who are exploited, marginalized, and condemned by society. He employs alliteration, repetition, and assonance to achieve his objective.
McKay has used alliteration in his work to create a rhythm that resonates with his sympathy to the girls; for instance, in the first line, H-sounds formed in line 1 “Hear, and halting”, and line 2“Harlem,” creates a hush in the street at night (Hoagwood 52). The continuation of the first line to the second causes the sentence to fall to the next line, where the word “fall,” embeds the echoing consonance of “fall” and “veil” (lines 2, 3). The “dishonor and disgrace” (line 14), have also been used to denote the author’s disapproval of the actions being undertaken by the young girls during the night to survive. The “bend and barter” (line 4), represents a b-alliteration of hard and battering. Again, in the “feet of my fallen race” (line 16), f-alliterates to demonstrate how the lives of the black women have been degraded and denied equality with other races in the world.
Repetition is another stylistic device used in the poem to portray the poet’s sympathy for the black women. For example, the phrase &lsqu...