The speaker is a "youth," apparently well-educated, male, and an outsider figure, who describes his complex and ambivalent feelings towards America and his prophecy for America's future.
America the nation is personified as female in the poem, and "she" is also compared to a tigress and a "king in state." America sustains and invigorates, but also oppresses and depletes, the speaker.
The Question and Answer section for America (Claude McKay poem) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
Can you please quote the metaphor? Thanks.
Did you have a question about Cat in the Hat?
On the one hand, the "cultured" in "cultured hell" confirms America's achievements, anticipating the "wonders" and "priceless treasures" at the end of the poem and countering any Eliotic notion of modernity as a cultural wasteland. Yet the "hell"...
