Joy in the Woods

Though published more than a century ago, “Joy in the Woods” still speaks to a culture uncertain and uneasy over the rewards of work. The poem’s longevity thus reflects Claude McKay’s understanding of the psychology of work itself. Save for the 1% of any capitalist culture that controls the means of production, work can feel unrewarding. This feeling is a cliché of the post-punk culture, with its hard-core rejection of authority most malignantly represented by the workplace. The feeling is also a reflection of the ever-expanding computer-created digital work environment in which conventional boundaries between work and home have been all but lost.

The sentiment that work is unrewarding for many doesn't derive from a simple explanation; rather, work "sucks" because it sucks the life out of workers. The poem reveals that the damage done by any culture’s commitment to enslaving much of its population to unrewarding work goes soul deep. Within that oppressive culture, any memories of the world of nature become increasingly nostalgic, increasingly ironic as one by one we each surrender to a work world that first strips us of our humanity, then burdens us with onerous and repetitive tasks, and in the end wears down our anger and our anxieties and deconstructs us each into slick, unfeeling but useful man-machines.