by Aaron Dollhausen

Created on: September 23, 2010

A Call to Militant Action: Explication of Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die”

Jamaican-born writer Claude McKay immigrated to the United States in 1912.  Through his ability to convey the struggle of American blacks, McKay established himself as one of the leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance, second only to Langston Hughes.  After he witnessed vicious race riots which consumed many American cities during the Red Summer of 1919, he composed the poem “If We Must Die,” which was published in the July 1919 issue of the magazine Liberator (Ramesh and Nirupa Rani 5).  “If We Must Die” was written to urge black people to take action against racial oppression.

            The poem “If We Must Die” is written in the tradition of English sonnets which uses 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 commonly used in English sonnets are ababcdcdefefgg, which McKay employs in this manner: 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.  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 as a response to racial violence, McKay never mentions race.  In fact, 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).  Following McKay’s universal message, this essay will not mention race.  Instead, the terms “oppressors,” “oppressed people,” and “the oppressed” will be used. It was the universal reach

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