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Poem Analysis: If We Must Die By Claude Mckay

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Poem Analysis: If We Must Die By Claude Mckay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican poet who created a literary movement and heavily influenced the tone for the Harlem Renaissance. In “If We Must Die”, he expresses how he wants to retaliate for prejudice and abuse of African-Americans within a english sonnet. McKay employs the english sonnet form to create a couplet that explains the purpose of this fight as the quatrains describe how they will fight.

In the first quatrain McKay introduces the the issue; it is announced that they are being attacked. The phrase “the mad and hungry dogs” provides a critical tone comparing their enemy to a vicsious animal who is full of hate and less than human.

In the second and third quatrain it is iterated that if they are going to die it will be done with the
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