The poem expresses deep and powerful feelings about America within the discipline of the 14-line sonnet form. The first three lines could hardly be a more damning indictment of the United States. America is personified as a feminine figure—a mother—as “she” feeds him “bread of bitterness” (Line 1). Bitterness is a natural reaction to what the speaker must endure, and in a way, it sustains him. The personification of America retains its femininity but becomes animalistic, tearing at the speaker’s throat like a wild animal—a tiger—who is aiming to kill. The next line implies the attack is, on some level, lethal, “[s]tealing [his] breath of life” (Line 3).

However, those images of aggression and victimhood are not the entire story. America is more than its fierce hostility to the Black race. In Line 4, the speaker admits he loves America, though he considers it a “cultured hell.” He may mean that America is a hell that has been created by human—that is, white—culture; the hell is an artifice, and there is nothing natural about it. However, he could simply be pointing out that America has a sophisticated culture; perhaps he is thinking of the arts or about the broader cultural life of the nation.