The Congo

Each section of “The Congo” constitutes its own ritual: The speaker undergoes a transporting vision, one that he interprets as a correspondence between the behaviors of Black Americans and their forbears in the Congo. A series of magic words, the repeated “boomlay” and “boom,” invoke and reinforce the transformation. Lindsay’s speaker stops short of true transformation, choosing instead to interpret his vision as a victory of a colonizing religion—a set of rituals ratified by his culture. The speaker believes this victory to be a moral and spiritual one, judging the rituals and ceremonies of the Congo as “savage” and less valuable. While the speaker celebrates Christian supremacy, he focuses on lush descriptions of the Congo and its people to entertain his audience with a fanciful tableau. His own descriptions, however, do not stop him from describing the “savagery” (Section I, title) of Black people. After his sweeping sensory descriptions in the dance sequence of Section II, the speaker says, “rare was the revel” (Section II, Line 67), pronouncing it “well worth while” (Section II, Line 67). But in Section III, the first strophe describes a Christian ritual, a “jubilee revival” (Section III, Line 8). At best, the speaker portrays Black American Christianity as strengthened by its connection to African traditions and rituals.