The Incomparable Horrors of Lynching
McKay's poem is not only a depiction of lynching, but also an implicit argument about how lynchings should be depicted, and one of McKay's central points is that lynchings are incomparable in their horror. Highly uncharacteristically, "The Lynching" uses no similes or metaphors, for McKay does not want to rationalize or mitigate the atrocity of the lynching in any way. Similarly, McKay asserts in line 2 that this death is "the cruelest way of pain," suggesting through the superlative form that there is no death worse than lynching—not even being crucified like Christ. And while many of McKay's other famous poems compare racist whites to dogs, tigers, monsters, or other predatory creatures, here McKay pointedly resists such comparisons in referring to the "little lads" and blue-eyed women. After seeing these crowds react unfeelingly or even happily to the brutal murder of an innocent victim, McKay does not need to use figurative language to show us that these onlookers are monsters, for he knows that simply describing their "fiendish glee" is much more horrifying.
The Continuity of Racial Violence
Another of the poem's central themes is the continuity of racial violence, and the poem not only indicts the ongoing racism of the early twentieth century but points to a culture of white supremacy that will continue for years to come. In the poem's final couplet—typically used in the "Shakespearean" sonnet form as a resolution or conclusion—McKay notes that the only "resolution" here is that this cycle of racial violence will continue: this lynching has functioned as an initiation ritual for the next generation of lynch mobs. When McKay writes of the "little lads, lynchers that were to be," his "l" alliteration inextricably ties the lads to their future as "lynchers," and the diction of “were to be” doubles down on “to be” verbs to imply that these children actually exist to be lynchers. With the larger world including "Fate" and God unable or unwilling to intervene, and the current generation of "steely" women presumably going to produce yet another generation of lynchers, McKay insists on racism and violence as systemic aspects of U.S. culture.
