Essay Questions

What is the overarching message the speaker is trying to convey?

The key line to understanding the central meaning of this poem is found in the opening of the fourth stanza. The speaker tells God the Father that he understands well, “yours is no fairy gift” and then proceeds directly to state the essential theme of the poem, which is that no heritage is situated without difficulty attained without work. In fact, he is not merely telling God that he understands this to be so, but also thanking God for it being so. The reference to “weak wills” which aspire to the heritage that comes easy is suggesting that only the feeblest of men would wish for a God that grants wishes requiring no effort on their part. The message of the poem is thus one’s heritage at birth is beyond control and always comes with certain limitations attached, but the opportunity is always present to improve that heritage through effort and sustenance of the will.

What is the elegantly overstated language of the second stanza saying in simpler terms?

Cullen is a poet whose verse always reveals a mastery of language. The word choice throughout the second stanza is intentionally formal. The lofty and elevated manner of speech that characterizes the second stanza to a degree not sustained in any other stanza is purposely ironic. The phrase “accustomed indigence” signals that the stanza is specifically directed to the members on the lowest end of the economic scale which through implication also signifies them as the least educated and therefore least likely to understand the language being used. The entire message is constructed in the second stanza boiled down to simple terms along the lines of “those who work hardest for smallest gain are also most likely to be thankful for that gain no matter how small.” The point of this message within the overall theme of the poem is that despite having no control over the heritage one is born into, even those who into the most difficult circumstances have been endowed by the Father with the ability to control how they respond to those circumstances.

Why might the phrase “the shyest of your dreams” often be interpreted as a direct reference to slavery?

The speaker is presenting an optimistic philosophical perspective that strongly renunciates giving into nihilism as a reaction to hopelessness. The phrase “shyest of your dreams” has been perceived in many academic critiques of the poem as an oblique description of the difficulty of hoping for something better when born into the worst possible conditions. The worst possible conditions for any African American poet in instinctively perceived as slavery simply as a result of historical context. Being born into not just bondage but a long-established heritage of generational slavery is without question the circumstance in holding onto a dream—much less actively pursuing—of something better would be easy to “shy away” from. It would also be one in which a nihilistic response most easily developed. Within this context of slavery, the suggestion that these shyest dreams have come true can be interpreted as a reference to emancipation and the subsequent abolition of slavery. These were dreams of generations of slaves.