Blog #11: Response to Paige Well's Blog

I definitely agree with you that this “awful sin” McKay speaks of is referring to the Biblical sin of all mankind, but I also think it is referring to the observers who watched Jesus being crucified. In the context of McKay’s “The Lynching” this could refer to the people or citizens watching the lynching. However I looked up Luke 23:46 that is in the footnote at the end of the poem and this verse reads, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. When he said he had said this, he breathed his last.” So I now understand and agree with you that your point about irony in McKay’s meaning makes sense. In Luke 23 “Father” is capitalized while “spirit” is not, but in McKay’s poem “father” is not capitalized while “Spirit” is. In my opinion I think that the reason McKay might have capitalized “Spirit” is because the black men who were being hung were like Jesus and had no reason to hang. Therefore maybe their Spirit is like Jesus and needs to be capitalized to show that they were like Jesus. So this “awful sin” again may refer to the people who watched the lynching. Luke 23:47-49 says that after the deed was done those who didn’t believe “beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him…stood at a distance, watching these things.” At the end of McKay’s poem he even mentions that the next day after the lynching people would come back and look the man swinging there and no one (not even the women) “showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue.” I think this whole poem could be translated into Jesus’ crucifixion as it speaks of the “cruelest way of pain” because back then being crucified was the ultimate form of death, in today’s criminal justice system it would be equal to capital punishment with lethal injections or the electric chair. Lastly, I think that the “star” could refer to “His father” as in God. Maybe McKay chose not to capitalize “father” and “star” to show the irony you spoke of. How could a “star” allow this to happen just as us who are Christian still wonder why God would let Jesus die for mankind when he was pure and perfect.