Altars

Countee Cullen invokes the image of the alter at one particularly important moment in the poem. In the sixth stanza the speaker refers to “double part” he plays at the “glowing altar” of Jesus Christ (6). The image of the altar is used to represent not just the act of prayer, but the entire notion of serving an ideology and a cosmology. This is introduced in the context of the confusing state of worshipping at the altar of a messenger depicted as bearing a European phenotype, when oneself is of an African phenotype. The altar, in this instance, represents the entire construct of the Euro-American social order.

Hearts

The speaker refers to his troubled heart on numerous occasions in the verse. Most notably, he says, “Must my heart grow sick and falter / Wishing he I served were black” (6). The heart’s conflict in this stanza stems from...