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Vachel LindsayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
When Vachel Lindsay uses the term “witch-doctor” starting in Line 23 of the poem’s first section, “The Congo” marginalizes its subjects as superstitious, illiterate, and barbaric. The term would only be used by white populations describing African or diaspora cultural practices, especially those ceremonies and behaviors outside Christian tradition. With these images, Lindsay conjures negative stereotypes of cannibals and war-like native peoples. Similarly, the name “Mumbo Jumbo” is a Caucasian invention designed to mimic African languages without specificity. While the terms “voodoo” and “hoo doo” can hark back to some original African religious practices, these terms in popular culture can represent any number of syncretic religions in areas where African enslaved people lived from the 17th century on, including the Caribbean, South and Central America, Cuba, Haiti, Louisiana, and the coastal communities of South Carolina and Georgia. By using these terms in “The Congo,” Lindsay flattens Black culture through shorthand, implying that all Black cultures are the same. Lindsay includes images of witch-doctors and voo-doo above all for dramatic effect, since their relation to both the occult and to the unknowable aspects of Black culture would have astonished and frightened his mostly-white audiences.
Lindsay understands the dramatic potential in setting a performance poem in the jungle. From 17th-century map cartouches featuring cannibal feasts to Rousseau’s depiction of the “noble savage,” romantic versions of secluded tribes and “exotic” peoples have captivated Western audiences. In the early 20th century, the unknown territories, reachable only through a long journey by river, often served as a metaphor for the unconscious. In “The Congo,” Lindsay attempts to make observations about human desire, our sense of good and evil, and our potential for great good and great destruction. Because the poem seeks primarily to entertain, Lindsay does not draw conclusions, instead relying on the recognizable image of the jungle as a mysterious and powerful place in order to engage and fascinate his audience.
In his advocacy for writers like Langston Hughes, his admiration for jazz and blues, and in many of his other writings, Vachel Lindsay shows appreciation and respect for Black American culture. One aspect of “The Congo” also demonstrates his authentic interest, particularly in Black American musical traditions: his use of percussive, alliterative language and his specific use of imagery related to rhythm. Men beat time on a barrel table in the first section of the poem, and the imagination of the speaker who watches them transports an American “rag-time tune” (Section I, Line 31) all the way back to the Congo. The booms that echo throughout all three sections allowed Lindsay to perform the poem like a jazz improvisation. The beat starts as an auditory performance in the first section, then becomes dance-based in the second section as “coal-black maidens’ (Section II, Line 41) and men in silk hats dance the juba like the crap-shooters from the opening lines of the section. In the third section, the Bibles and hymn books beat in unison in the opening strophe until they alter the refrain, breaking Mumbo Jumbo’s hold. This beat connects the American scenes back to African roots throughout the poem.