Chains and Shackles: From Physical Restraints to Systemic Bondage

Introduction

In Martina McGowan’s poetry collection I Am The Rage, the image of chains and shackles operates as a concrete historical object and a flexible metaphor for modern oppression. The symbol first appears as the literal iron restraints of the Middle Passage and American slavery, then recurs in evolving forms—mental fetters, economic cages, police violence, and internalized servitude. By tracking how chains and shackles reappear across the poems, readers can trace the collection’s central argument: that the bondage of the past has not ended but has only changed its appearance.

Literal Meaning of the Symbol

Chains and shackles are physical restraints historically used to bind enslaved Africans during the Middle Passage and on plantations. In the collection, the most direct reference occurs in Chapter 1, “I Am the Rage,” where the speaker says: “I am the ever-present clanking chains / In the belly of the cargo hold.” This places the symbol within the holds of slave ships, linking it to the ancestral trauma of forced removal.

Chapter 3, “Motivated Forgetting,” opens with a blunt list: “Whips, chains, and shackles / Mark the apocalyptic turn of all darker peoples.” Here the three objects together symbolize the full apparatus of chattel slavery. The chapter reinforces that these were not abstract—they were instruments of physical control used to discipline and contain Black bodies.

Where the Symbol Recurs

Beyond these explicit mentions, chains and shackles reappear through synonyms and related images:

Even the noose in Chapter 14 (“A Shocking New Race War”)—“another heavy noose coiled around my neck”—acts as a related restraint, evoking lynching as a form of extra-legal control.

How Its Meaning Changes

From Historic to Contemporary

In the opening poems, chains are firmly in the past: the cargo hold, the whips and shackles of slavery. But by Chapter 3, the speaker collapses time: “The intensity of life has not changed in these 400 years / 200 years as freed-men and freed-women / Or, only free-ish.” The chains become a symbol of a freedom that was never truly granted. The poem explicitly connects “slave patrollers” to modern police, implying that the same shackles now take the form of legalized state violence.

From Physical to Psychological

Chapter 13, “We Still Stand (Noble and Proud),” shifts the symbol inward: “Pushing against the fetters of Your mind / And the cramped lives You have carved out for us.” The “fetters” here are mental—the psychological constraints imposed by a racist society that limits what Black people can imagine for themselves. Chapter 27 develops this further when the speaker describes “breaking out of the cookie-cutter mold of being a well-mannered possession / A slave to what makes others feel comfortable.” The chains become internalized expectations to perform docility.

From Metal to Systemic

By the later poems, the literal shackles have been replaced by systemic structures. Chapter 24, “Juneteenth,” describes how “The patrollers are dressed differently / They have traded in their tattered rags for riot gear / Swapped out their whips for tasers and bullets.” The instruments change, but the function remains: to control Black bodies. Chapter 20, “Traffic Stop,” dramatizes this through a police stop that the speaker instantly recognizes as an attempt to “Send us back to their plantations.” The traffic stop—a mundane event—becomes a modern version of the slave patrol, using the threat of arrest as a new set of shackles.

Chapter 26, “BIPOC,” uses the image of a cage: “Sitting in a cage / Waiting for the spark to ignite” and “Doors bolted shut / To keep us from stretching too far.” The cage is the systemic barrier that prevents full citizenship, just as iron chains once did.

Character and Theme Connections

The Speaker / Poetic Persona

The speaker of “I Am the Rage” embodies the ancestral memory of chains. She declares “I am the ever-present clanking chains,” making the symbol part of her very identity. This connects the personal to the historical—her rage is fueled by the memory of physical bondage that she carries in her body.

Breonna Taylor

Although Breonna Taylor’s poem (Chapter 2) does not mention chains directly, her story is linked to the symbol through imagery of forced entry: “the shadow batters down her door.” The no-knock raid that killed her echoes the historical violation of slave dwellings. The collection as a whole positions her death as a continuation of the same system that once used iron shackles.

Black Mother / Parent

In Chapter 1, the mother figure “wields the belt that cuts both ways / that beats my children / in hopes that You will spare their lives.” The belt, while not a chain, is a form of restraint the mother uses preemptively. She is caught in a system where she must physically discipline her own children to protect them from police violence—a modern form of bondage that forces her to participate in controlling her own family.

The Oppressor Addressed as “You”

The “You” of the collection is consistently the one who wields chains, both literal and figurative. In Chapter 3, “You” is the one who says “unnatural naturally violent nature. / Or so You tell us.” In Chapter 21, “How You Hate to Rape Me,” the assailant uses a gun, badge, and force: “You plunge your corrupted flesh into the secret spaces / you allegedly despise.” The oppressor attempts to imprison and own, but the speaker concludes: “you can never own me.” The fight against shackles is a refusal to be possessed.

Themes

• Systemic Racism and Police Violence: The evolution of chains into police tasers and bullets directly links the historical symbol to modern state violence.
• Black Rage and Resilience: The speaker’s rage is fueled by the memory of chains, and her refusal to be consumed by them demonstrates resilience.
• Parental Fear and Protection: The mother’s belt is a metaphorical chain born of fear—she binds her children to try to keep them alive.
• Historical Memory and Collective Trauma: The chains in the cargo hold are a traumatic memory that the speaker cannot forget, and which the collection refuses to let readers forget.
• Performative Allyship and Authentic Solidarity: The white friend in Chapter 20 initially fails to see the traffic stop as a chain; her eventual “aha” moment represents a partial awakening, but the speaker knows “we are never free.”

Study Questions with Answers

1. In what ways do the literal chains of slavery reappear as modern forms of bondage in the collection?
In Chapter 24, “Juneteenth,” the poet writes that police now carry tasers and bullets instead of whips, but the function of control remains unchanged. Chapter 20, “Traffic Stop,” dramatizes a routine police stop as an attempted return to the plantation. The speaker in Chapter 26 sits in a “cage” of systemic inequality, with “doors bolted shut.” Each of these updates the physical chain into a contemporary apparatus of oppression.

2. How does the image of “chains” evolve from Chapter 1 to Chapter 13?
In Chapter 1, the chains are material—“clanking chains / In the belly of the cargo hold”—anchored to the Middle Passage. By Chapter 13, the speaker pushes against “the fetters of Your mind,” moving from iron to psychological restraint. The symbol shifts from historical fact to internal limitation, showing how oppression persists even after physical shackles are removed.

3. How does the metaphor of shackles connect to the theme of parental fear?
In Chapter 1, the mother “wields the belt that cuts both ways,” using physical punishment to try to protect her children from state violence. The belt becomes a self-imposed chain—a desperate act to enforce compliance so that the child will survive encounters with police. This illustrates how systemic bondage forces parents to become agents of control within their own families.

4. What does the speaker mean in Chapter 27 when she describes being a “slave to what makes others feel comfortable”?
The speaker in “Spoken Words Fail Me But…” rejects the role of a “well-mannered possession” who must produce art that does not disturb. She “plumb[s] the depths of a pain we are afraid to speak.” The “slave” here is an internalized demand to be palatable, to suppress rage and avoid making white audiences uncomfortable. This is a psychological shackle that the poem breaks by speaking truth.