Claude Mckay If We Must Die

The Harlem Renaissance happened in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s; it was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that sparked a new black cultural individuality. Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American author who supported the idea that African-Americans should rely on themselves to become self-governing. McKay's poem "If We Must Die" is composed by his well-known lines after riots in the summer of 1919 that left a significant number of black men, women, and children massacred out of racism. During the course of the poem, McKay states continually that blacks must be ready to die for their rights. The African-Americans know they will die, therefore, they are not fighting for survival; they are fighting honorably so that their death will not be pointless. …show more content…
The first eight lines, octave, present the situation in this case revealing the conflict between cultural origins and the harsh realities of prejudice against African Americans. Lines one through four give an insight of their lives; they were attacked and put into awful conditions and were being “mocked” (4) for their luck. There is a shift in between the octave and sestet called the turn in line 9, where the speaker calls his kinsmen to action, "meet the common foe!" The final six lines, sestet, answers with a solution to the problem which is to revolt against the unfairness. The couplet in the end of the poem sums up the conclusion that they should not tolerate the