  Over time there has been a great deal of movement in the field of American literature surrounding the moral and political advancement of society. Walt Whitman, Claude McKay and Steve Earle are post-Civil War political and social reformers. They are citizens dedicated to political and social reform. Walt Whitman’s colorful battlefield imagery helps to evolve a new perspective of the atrocities that were brought about by the Civil War; Claude McKay’s poignant poetry attempts to bring about change by detailing the injustices imposed upon African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century, and Steven Earle’s work strikes a chord by delving into the controversy surrounding the contemporary capital punishment system, in his writing about an innocent man’s execution. Whitman, McKay, and Earle use their writing as a vehicle to bring about change by nakedly exposing morally shocking events that occur in the course of American life to bring social and political reform to the forefront of people’s minds.
Their intention is to contribute to the process of molding America into a more perfect society. Whitman’s Drum-Taps poems document the carnage of the Civil War. As a Civil War hospital attendant, Walt Whitman, sees the horrors of combat: countless badly injured and deceased young men. His writing doesn’t directly contest the validity of the Civil War; however it attempts to thwart falsely conceived romantic views of war. His work reminds readers that those killed on the battlefield are children’s fathers, mothers’ sons, and sisters’ brothers.
Whitman, through his poetry, recounts the inevitable harm that stems from the violence of war, and its inevitable influence on family, friends, and the rippling percussions felt by society. “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim” (112) chronicles one of Whitman’s trips past a hospital tent. He comes upon three men on stretchers who had been injured in combat. To help project a tragic gray and dim image, Whitman focuses his readers’ attention on the youthful qualities of two of the three wounded soldiers. Whitman asks the second soldier: “[W]ho are you my child and darling?/ Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?” His interrogative lines oblige readers to sympathize with the boy. His technique drives readers’ minds to conjure up images of a young man in the prime of his life. A typical young man would have his entire life ahead of him, but the young soldier in Whitman’s poem may die before sundown, in the dawn of his life. The third wounded soldier Whitman makes contact with has “a face nor child nor old,” yet he is “very calm, [and his face is] .
. .
of beautiful yellow white ivory” (112). Whitman compares him to God: “Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ/ himself,/ Dead and divine and brother to all, and here again he lies” (112).
Whitman lives in an extremely Christian society. Christianity collectively believes that Christ was ultimately nailed to the cross for the forgiveness of sins and the spiritual betterment of humanity. Christian based societal influences may have been a root cause for many young men’s decisions to endanger their lives for their cause—advancement of their society. Ironically, many altruistic young Christians enlisted in the war effort so that they could live, or even die like Christ. Many soldier’s sacrifice their lives because they believe that they are walking in Christ’s footsteps.
Many soldiers’ psyches are powered by the motto: “for God and country,” which leads them to unselfishly lay down their lives. Whitman’s juxtaposition of the horrors of war by using the murders of a young boy and a Christ figure would distress many nineteenth century Americans. The message that Whitman proclaims is real. It transcends the lines of his poetry: society must realize that there is nothing romantic about war.
People: fathers, sons, and brothers are killed. The suffering that is involved in the engagement in war should never be viewed quixotically. War should be avoided and looked upon as a last resort. The poem, “Reconciliation” (115) is Whitman’s call for America to leave wartime hatred behind. It expresses his dismay at political boundaries and their earthly power to determine another person’ status as a friend or a foe. He attends the funeral of an “enemy,” a fallen Confederate soldier; “For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead” (115). By publishing a poem based on his presence at his enemy’s funeral he encourages his American audience to set aside its hatred and love for the sake of all. Whitman concedes that he and his enemy are equals. He doesn’t harbor any hatred for a man that would have killed him and his compatriots. “I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near,/ Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin” (115) Whitman steps around nationalistic hatred and “look[s] where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near,/ Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin” (115).
His love for humanity surpasses the stench of hatred that wafts from the winds of war. Whitman does not take a direct stance against the Civil War; after all, he tacitly supports the conflict by residing with Union soldiers throughout a large part of the war. His Drum-taps poetry calls upon Northerners and Southerners alike to shed their romantic idealization of armed conflict. Whitman’s episodic depictions of battlefield tragedy serve as plea for people to do all that is possible to move past their feelings of hatred and vengeance.
Yankees look into the eyes of Rebels! Do you not see the eyes of a fellow human being? People of the Confederacy look at your Union counterparts. Are they not of flesh and blood? They are! Whitman convincingly portrays the muted horrors of war. Claude McKay, a native Jamaican, fought social battles of a different kind. Credited as being the Father of the Harlem Renaissance, McKay skillfully amalgamates his experiences and his literary genius into a policy- and society-changing wave of poetry. Iambic lines aid in the overall flow of his sonnet-like poetry. His academic background, along with his thirst for social justice helps lay down the groundwork for his progressive fight for the social and political betterment of his country by ridding it of the shadowy stalkers that his people are forced to endure: discrimination and oppression. McKay uses his venomous poetry as a means to correct wrongful Caucasian America’s racist conventions that pollute society as a whole.
His poignant lines benefit the advancement American society by personifying the traditionally reified African American spirit. McKay’s poetry evokes the empathy of the nation by lending an influential voice to those African Americans who experienced the havoc carried out for centuries Negro humanness readers McKay reveals his discreet anger that is roused from the mistreatment of him and his people in his poem, “The White House” (291): “Your door is shut against my tightened face.” His being forced to stay outside of the metaphorical “White House” door makes him angry. His anger, like the anger of most of the oppressed, is based in the fact that he is excluded from equal treatment because he is a black man, not because he has done something to be remanded to the realm of societal inferior. McKay’s next line brings attention to his people’s unjust frustration: “And I am sharp as steel with discontent.” Anger and frustration are “as sharp as steel.” For the purpose of bringing about societal and political change, McKay publicly voices his infuriation with the government system for excluding him for no reason other than the color of his skin.
McKay suggests to his readers that he could have been driven towards rage, but it wouldn’t have been a prudent step: “But I possess the courage and the grace/ To bear my anger proudly and unbent.” It would add fuel to the fire against his people’s fight for equality.
Expressing his anger would, in effect, reinforce the dominant white belief that blacks are savages who can not control their tempers or behave like civilized human beings. With a taste of bitter irony, McKay plays out the widely held white misconception that blacks are subhuman savages; “The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,/ A chafing savage, down the decent street.” His statement forces readers to question propaganda imposed visceral images of a barefooted Neanderthal savage stomping down a decent suburban street where the most dignified, refined, and well-mannered white people live. He passes through society as an outsider looking in. He knows that African Americans have the potential to be as intellectual and as civilized as white men but they aren’t given the resources needed to succeed, because of the color of their skin: “And passion rends my vitals as I pass,/ Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.” The “shuttered door of glass” represents the transparent barrier that whites erected to prevent African Americans from accessing a lifestyle within the realm of normalcy, because whites hoard it all for themselves. Caged up like hungry animals, many African Americans are goaded by the sight of others being nourished by the foods of freedom. Blacks are prevented from walking though the “shuttered door of glass” and into a status of societal equality.
Glass is breakable; McKay calls upon his people, and his fellow Americans, to search for clever ways to break it without doing undue harm. McKay’s articulation of oppressed Africans Americans’ internal restraint drives white readers to reflect on potential repercussions that could come from their maltreatment ; “Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,/ Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,/ And find in it the superhuman power/ To hold me to the letter of your law!” Everyday, McKay is faced with discrimination and the society that forces him to endure it. Besides societal ostracism, his blackness makes him a target for transgressions by the white-controlled legal system. He is wise to realize that it would be dangerous to react directly against the injustice of his white oppressors.
There are potential repercussions that could stem from asserting his humanness. Unlike his tormenters, he possesses a “superhuman power”: he is able to exercise amazing restraint, despite being forced to live his life as a dishonored black man in a hateful Euro-American society. McKay proactively shields himself from being pulled into the same hateful cycle that has absorbed his oppressors, “Oh I must keep my heart inviolate/ Against the potent poison of your hate.” Hatred pollutes the human spirit. If he were to hate white people the way that white people hate black people he would be no different than them.
Throughout his work, Claude McKay took steps to elevate America’s standard of human decency. His work serves as an eye-opening critique against racial oppression. McKay writes to make America and its society and legal system better by taking steps to deescalate racial tension, and to humanize his fellow African Americans. Steve Earle published a collection of short stories in 2001: Doghouse Roses. One of the pieces featured in his collection is entitled The Witness. It details Gordon Elliot’s visit to an unnamed state’s death house to witness the execution of his wife, Joan’s “murderer.” The Witness is Earle’s assertion that society’s support for an inherently flawed death penalty system, which is cavalierly applied, is a disfiguring blemish that a civilized society must heal. Earle’s story, The Witness, attempts to trigger a revolting reaction by nakedly exposing a fictional tragedy due to realistic flaws that exist in the current state of the death penalty. Earle’s writing is his way of forcing America to question the noxious effects of its befuddled capital punishment system on innocent citizens. He implores citizens to take steps to enhance the accuracy of a legal system that now capriciously imposes and carries out death sentences in the name of society without taking significant precautions to prevent the execution of innocent persons. The Witness is an anticipatory piece that begs a society to take steps that will prevent the system from executing an innocent person.
The story begins with Elliot behind the wheel of his vehicle, six miles from the death house. Rather than thinking about his wife’s murder “at the hands of their Spanish-speaking gardener, Andres Camacho”; the gruesome nature of the execution, or receiving closure from the death of Camacho, he thinks about the quick commute due to the lack of “traffic coming from the penitentiary this time of night” (Earle 173). He arrives at the brightly lighted prison. While clearing the checkpoints, Elliot notices an anti-death penalty demonstrator mouthing “the word ‘murderer’” (Earle 173). Once inside, Elliot met with prison officials, police officers, officers of the court, and the news media who are among the “victim’s witnesses.” Being faithful servants of the legal process, their actions convey their indoctrinated belief that Gordon Elliot is to be cleansed by the wheels of the American justice system.
After the lethal injection passes through Camacho’s body, Elliot will be able to put his trauma behind him and move on. Russ McBride, an Associated Press reporter notices Elliot’s visible nervousness and he comforts him with reassuring words: “Oh, yeah, this is my sixty-fourth execution .
. . .
Don’t worry, these boys have it down to a science. It’ll all be over with before you know it and you can get on with your life” (Earle 177). It’s as if McBride, a witness to sixty-three previous killings was telling Elliot that “Camacho, the monster, an “object,” the obstacle preventing you from moving on will be destroyed in few minutes.
Sit tight! It’ll be over lickety-split!” Earle’s critique of the capital punishment system is that it is staffed by death penalty zealots who are so shortsighted and obsessed with carrying out executions that they lose sight of the humanness of the condemned. Earle also suggests that death penalty opponents are under the same spell; down the hall from the “victim’s witnesses,” the “offender’s witnesses” await too. They anxiously await Camacho’s execution to be carried out. People like “Mary Egan, a thirty-eight-year-old schoolteacher and activist from Northampton, Massachusetts, have never met Andres Camacho face to face” (Earle 182), yet she believes in his innocence. She corresponded with Camacho via mail. Like the “victim’s witnesses,” she is at the execution for her benefit. She knows that “[b]eing a witness at a killing .
. .
would afford her instant credibility” (Earle 182). Egan, however, “couldn’t shake the feeling that she was somehow helping to facilitate this one” (Earle 183). Earle nakedly exposes the realization that all the characters have a morbid fascination with the death penalty. Elliot eagerly awaits the execution so that he can move on with his life, while Egan awaits her pen pal’s death so that she can dawn “the ultimate badge of courage in the abolition movement” (Earle 182).
Camacho’s execution is carried out flawlessly. He is wheeled into the death chamber. He proclaims his innocence, and without warning he dies a painless death. What Earle waits to divulge is the legal system’s nightmare: people “didn’t know that when Andres Camacho had proclaimed his innocence .
. .
he was telling the truth” (Earle 199). The legal system failed Camacho and Joan Elliot.
It was unable to determine that Elliot Gordon “seized .
. .
[his wife] by the throat and lifted her up out of bed, high enough that her feet kicked in the air like a hanged man’s and then he squeezed, harder and harder, until he heard her larynx collapse with a sickening, wet snap” (Earle 200). Now that the execution was over, Gordon carefully calculated the murder of two people. An incident that helped abolish the death penalty in England had taken place in the United States. The flawed legal system had done what he claimed would never happen: it put an innocent man to death.
Steve Earle’s is a writer who sees the flaws that are imbedded in the contemporary legal system. Coupled with domestic and international pressure, work like Earle’s can help enact safety guards that can prevent wrongful executions from happening. Writing is a tool used to diminish societal and political deficiencies. Whitman, McKay, and Earle use their writing to cast indictments against the failures of society, and to bring about a collective change. Walt Whitman used his pen to wage a war against the romanticism of war; Claude McKay used his quill to quell the silence of racial persecution; and Earle wrote to kill fatal flaws within the American justice system. Armed with pens and paper, and accompanied by their muses, they combated the wicked—the ills of society. Works Cited Earle, Steve.
Doghouse Roses.
New York: Houghton Mifflin. 2001. McKay, Claude. “White House.” Davide Levering Lewis (ed.). The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Penguin Books. 1994. Whitman, Walt. “Reconciliation” and “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim.” Nina Baym (ed.). The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 
