18 pages • 36 minutes read

Heritage

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

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.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Poetic Form and Structure

“Heritage” is comprised of rhyming couplets, which means that pairs of adjoining lines rhyme, creating an AABBCC pattern. There are 64 couplets in the poem totaling 128 lines. Most lines contain seven syllables, with an irregular metric structure (accents are differently distributed in different lines).

The poem’s seven stanzas follow a careful trajectory. The first stanza offers the speaker’s central question about the meaning of Africa. In the second stanza, the speaker describes their reluctant obsession with African sounds and images. The third stanza shows their efforts to distance themself from Africa and its connotations, but the fourth stanza reveals that these have a powerful subconscious impact on the speaker. The brief fifth stanza is transitional and introduces the theme of religion. The sixth stanza finally reveals the speaker’s deeper concerns behind the obsession with Africa: how to cope with grief and anger caused by the history of slavery and racism. Finally, the seventh stanza expresses the speaker’s conclusion that they must keep these dangerous feelings at bay, or be swallowed alive. Their fantasy of Africa invokes these feelings but also keeps the feelings safely romanticized. Thus, the poem’s structure reflects the mental process through which the speaker maintains a very tentative control of potentially harmful emotions and impulses.

Anaphora

Anaphora is a poetic device in which certain words or phrases are repeated at the beginning of successive poetic lines to avoid repetition. The most prominent use of anaphora in “Heritage” is the repeated use of the phrase “So I lie” in the second stanza (Lines 11, 19, and 23) and the fourth stanza (Lines 64 and 71). These reiterations reflect and highlight the persistence of the images, sounds, and feelings that overwhelm the speaker. They also emphasize the speaker’s passivity since in lying down, they puts themself in a position most suitable for contemplation but least appropriate for action. Furthermore, it is worth noticing that the word “lie” (to be in a horizontal position) evokes its homonym “lie” (to speak untruth). The word “lie” used in its two different meanings is a rare case of homonyms in which both spelling and pronunciation are identical. In the context of the poem, this secondary connotation of “So I lie” might imply that there is something false or disingenuous in the speaker’s evocations of Africa. At one point, they acknowledge that Africa is a “book one thumbs / Listlessly till slumber comes” (Lines 31-32), rather than a genuinely experienced or observed reality. Thus, the implied homonym underlines the fact that the speaker’s Africa is a symbolic product of their mind rather than a geographical location defined by specific historical and cultural facts.

Apostrophe

Apostrophe is a figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses someone or something (often non-human or abstract) that is not present and cannot respond. In “Heritage,” the poet uses apostrophe in two strikingly different contexts. First, he addresses jungle snakes: “Silver snakes that once a year / Doff the lovely coats you wear” (Lines 41-42). The second person pronoun (“you”) indicates that the words are directed to the snakes. The speaker’s message is that the snakes should “[s]eek no [a bush in which to hide] in your fear / Lest a mortal eye should see [when they shed their skins]; / What’s your nakedness to me?” (Lines 43-45). The speaker wants to distance themself from the snakes (and the jungle life the snakes embody), yet the very intimacy with which the speaker talks to the snakes belies a professed disinterest. In the following stanza, the reader learns that the speaker’s disavowal of the jungle is indeed short-lived.

Another prominent apostrophe in the poem is directed to Jesus Christ. The words “Thy” (Line 99) and “Lord” (107) make clear that the speaker confesses desire for a Black god to Christ himself. The fact that the speaker apostrophizes both a symbol of the wild jungle (snakes) and a symbol of civilized religion (Christ), is another way the use of literary devices reflects the key theme of being torn between two opposing cultural influences and affinities.