Contradictions and Colonial Dualities in Shakespeare and McKay’s Sonnets

Question 1

Part A:

John Klause, in his article “Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnets’: Age in Love and the Goring of Thoughts,” claims that:

“the contradictions [in Shakespeare’s sonnets], real enough in themselves, are precisely the kind we might expect of a complex human being in turbulent love affairs.” (304)

Compare the presentation of contradictions in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 152” with two other sonnets selected from the list below. You must discuss and engage with arguments found in Klause’s article.

Part B:

P.S. Chauhan in his article “Rereading Claude McKay” claims that:

“the colonial sensibility … straddles two worlds  the one of its origin, the other of its adoption. Politically, its values and attitudes derive from, and swing between, the two sets. It sides, at once, with each of the two antagonists: the victim and the victimizer.” (69-70)

Compare the “straddling of two worlds” in McKay’s “Enslaved” with two other sonnets selected from the list below (different from the ones selected in Part A). You must discuss and engage with arguments found in Chauhan’s article.

Please ensure that you include a title, a single cohesive introduction, and conclusion besides the two parts of the question that you are supposed to address.

Besides the Shakespeare and McKay sonnet, you must select and analyse four sonnets from the list below:

• John Donne: “Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias”
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Sonnet 29”
• Wilfred Owen: “The Next War”
• Denis Johnson: “White, White Collars”
• Jack Agüeros: “Sonnet: The History of Puerto Rico”

Sonnet 152

By William Shakespeare

In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,

But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;

In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn In vowing new hate after new love bearing.

But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee

When I break twenty? I am perjured most, For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee, And all my honest faith in thee is lost.

For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,

Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy; And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,

Or made them swear against the thing they see.

For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured eye,

To swear against the truth so foul a lie.                                                   

Enslaved

By Claude McKay

Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,

For weary centuries despised, oppressed,

Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place

In the great life line of the Christian West;

And in the Black Land disinherited,

Robbed in the ancient country of its birth,

My heart grows sick with hate, becomes as lead, For this my race that has no home on earth.

Then from the dark depths of my soul I cry

To the avenging angel to consume

The white man’s world of wonders utterly:

Let it be swallowed up in earth’s vast womb,

Or upward roll as sacrificial smoke

To liberate my people from its yoke!                                                                                                        

Sonnets for Selection

Holy Sonnets: I Am A Little World Made Cunningly

By John Donne

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements and an angelic sprite,

But black sin hath betray’d to endless night

My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.

You which beyond that heaven which was most high

Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,

Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might

Drown my world with my weeping earnestly, Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.

But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire

Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,

And made it fouler; let their flames retire,

And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal

Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

(early 17^th Century)

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.  

Sonnet 29

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and bud

About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,

Put out broad leaves, and soon there ‘s nought to see Except the straggling green which hides the wood.

Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood

I will not have my thoughts instead of thee

Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly

Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should,

Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee Drop heavily down,—burst, shattered, everywhere!

Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee

And breathe within thy shadow a new air,

I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.                                                   

The Next War

By Wilfred Owen

War’s a joke for me and you,

While we know such dreams are true.

~~Siegfried Sassoon~~

Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death, — Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland, — Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand. We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath, — Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.

He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed

Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft,

We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!

We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.

No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers.

We laughed, — knowing that better men would come,

And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags. 

White, White Collars  

By Denis Johnson

We work in this building and we are hideous in the fluorescent light, you know our clothes woke up this morning and swallowed us like jewels and ride up and down the elevators, filled with us, turning and returning like the spray of light that goes around dance-halls among the dancing fools. My office smells like a theory, but here one weeps to see the goodness of the world laid bare and rising with the government on its lips, the alphabet congealing in the air around our heads. But in my belly’s flames someone is dancing, calling me by many names that are secret and filled with light and rise and break, and I see my previous lives.

Sonnet: The History Of Puerto Rico

By Jack Agüeros

Puerto Rico was created when the pumpkin on top of

The turtle burst and its teeming waters poured out

With all mankind and beastkind riding on the waves Until the water drained leaving a tropical paradise.

Puerto Rico was stumbled on by lost vampires bearing

Crucifix in one hand, arquebus in the other, sucking

The veins of land and men, tossing the pulp into the

Compost heap which they used as the foundation for Their fortifications and other vainglorious temples.

Puerto Rico was arrested just as it broke out of the

Spanish jail and, renamed a trusty, it was put in an American cell. When the prisoner hollered, “Yankee, Go Home,” Puerto Rico was referred to the United Nations.

Puerto Rico, to get to paradise now, you have to ride blood. (1996)

English Assignment Answers: Expert Answers on Above Poetry Questions

Introduction

The main focus of analysis in this essay is on human and political contradictions within sonnets by Shakespeare and McKay. The analysis establishes relationship between emotional conflict with colonial duality through critical perspectives by Klause and Chauhan

Shakespeare- contradictions in Love

Shakespeare discusses moral contradictions in love in Sonnet 152. The basis of discussion is on self Awareness of betrayal and perjury. According to the speaker, love is considered as both sacred and corrupt and its comparison with Sonnet 29 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning indicates that the dual nature of love is clearly revealed by analysing the tension between spiritual connection and earthly desire. And the contradictions in the case of Donne’s Holy Sonnet are identified between sin and redemption which clearly shows the inner turmoil of faith and passion. This reading is clearly supported by the argument provided by Klause which indicates that Shakespeare’s contradictions are similar to that of genuine human complexity in turbulent love affairs.

McKay – Straddling two worlds

The clear analysis of the colonial psyche torn between oppression and resistance is identified by Claude McKay in enslaved. The poem clearly considered the conflict of belonging to both the team’s world colonisers and victims’ world. This thing is quite similar to that of Ozymandias by Shelley which reflects the collapse of Imperial Pride under the weight of time. The history of Puerto Rico by Jack Agueros clearly indicates the colonial exploitation and struggle for identity.
According to the argument by Chauhan, it is considered as a colonial sensibility which is a type of divided consciousness between submission and rebellion.

Conclusion

The analysis of sonnets by Shakespeare and McKay clearly indicates the layered contradictions between personal love and historical struggle which clearly demonstrates the human conflict between truth and illusion. 

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