If We Must Die

If We Must Die
Writer Claude McKay immigrated to the United States from Jamaica in 1912. Through his ability to depict the struggle of black people in America, McKay established himself as one of the leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance, along with Langston Hughes. After he watched violent race riots which consumed American cities during the Summer of 1919, he wrote the poem “If We Must Die.” It was published in the July 1919 issue of the magazine Liberator (Ramesh and Nirupa Rani 5). “If We Must Die” was written to convince black people to take action against racial oppression and suppression. The poem “If We Must Die” is written in the style of English sonnets which use blank verse to mimic the way people speak. Blank verse is also known as iambic pentameter which alternates five soft and five hard syllables within each line. An example of iambic pentameter is found in the opening line: “if WE must DIE, let IT not BE like HOGS.” The rhyme scheme used a lot in English sonnets are ababcdcdefefgg, which McKay uses like this: the “a” words are “hogs” and “dogs,” the “b” words are “spot” and “lot,” and so forth until the poem ends with the “g” words “pack” and “back.” The poem consists of three quatrains of four lines each and finishes with a rhyming couplet (Tillery 28.) McKay used English-style sonnets to structure “If We Must Die,” not as a byproduct of his British structured schooling, but as a way to prove to white readers that a black poet can be just as literate and educated as any white writer (Keller).
Although this poem was written in response to racial violence, McKay never once uses the word race.” McKay pointed out that the poem embraces all oppressed or challenged people with the revolutionary message to fight heroically back against those who seek to destroy or oppress them (Tillery 34).” It was the universal reach of “If We Must Die” which initiated Sir Winston Churchill to recite this during World War Two (Ramesh and Nirupa Rani 70). To...