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Symbols & Motifs
Jungle Fauna and Flora
Images of jungle fauna (animal life) and flora (plant life) permeate much of the poem, from “barbaric birds” (Line 13) and “jungle herds” (Line 14) in the second stanza to “silver snakes” (Line 41) and “leprous flowers” (Line 46) in the third. In their freedom and their wildness, these serve as contrast to the speaker’s tamed, civilized life in America. The images seem to both appeal to and appall the speaker. The freedom and wildness of the jungle imply aggression and danger: Huge animals trample the grass (Lines 15-16), fierce cats stalk and kill their prey (Lines 34-40), and beautiful flowers could turn out to be poisonous. Perhaps even “savage measures” (Line 50), or untamed passions, of “[j]ungle boys and girls in love” (Line 51) imply potential violence. That explains the speaker’s reaction: “I cram against my ear / Both my thumbs, and keep them there” (Lines 20-21). These symbols of pre-civilized wildness evoke the possibility of the speaker betraying their habits of civilized behavior if they allow their grief and anger to get the best of them.
Rain
Lines 71-84 offer an elaborate description of the effect rain has on the speaker. They talk about “its primal measures” (Line 79), which is reminiscent of “savage measures” (Line 50) marking the passion of the jungle lovers, linking rain to the symbolism of African imagery throughout the poem. The rain represents the unconscious burden the speaker carries since they can “never quite / Safely sleep from rain at night” (Lines 71-72). It is a constant oppression not only when the speaker is consciously aware of it, and it affects something deep within: “Like a soul gone mad with pain / I must match its weird refrain” (Lines 75-76). Losing rational self-control, the speaker feels a need to respond to the rain. It makes them helpless and desperate: “I twist and squirm, / Writing like a baited worm” (Lines 77-78). The rain, or that inner voice responding to the rain, invites the speaker to “[s]trip!” (Line 80) and “dance the Lover’s Dance!” (Line 82). The exclamation marks accentuate the power of this call to remove the clothing of civilization and recover the wild passion of the jungle lovers (Lines 50-51). All this is happening “in an old remembered way” (Line 83), suggesting that the speaker’s unconscious impulses are closely related to their centuries-old Black heritage.
Dam and Flood
Cullen repeatedly uses imagery of the dam and flood to indicate the speaker’s feeling of a barely contained power about to break its boundaries. First, he describes the speaker’s “dark blood dammed within / Like great pulsing tides of wine” (Lines 26-27). Thus, there is something intoxicating about this power and the possibility of its release from “the fine / Channels of the chafing net” (Lines 28-29). The net in this image is a fishing net, around which the tides “surge and foam and fret” (Line 30). This early in the poem, the reader only begins to suspect that these tides relate to the speaker’s Blackness and their feelings about slavery and racism.
By the time this imagery resurfaces near the end of the poem, this connection is explicit. Having pondered the grief and anger which constitute their heritage, the speaker concludes that they must keep these under control: “One thing only must I do: / Quench my pride and cool my blood, / Lest I perish in the flood” (Lines 118-20; italicized in the original). The dam, then, symbolizes defensive mechanisms of the conscious self against the flood of disruptive negative feelings that the speaker must keep suppressed if they are to maintain their civilized life in its present form.
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By Countee Cullen
