If We Must Die

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1919

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Resilience in the Face of Oppression

The poem’s central theme is resilience against oppression. The speaker aligns himself with the oppressed by using the first-person plural when describing the plight of the persecuted. The speaker essentially says two things about the oppressed: They are precious, and they have power.

The idea that the oppressed are precious is an uplifting message designed to inspire self-worth and love in the oppressed people of the poem. It is easy to internalize oppression, hatred, and insignificance. When the entire world tells a person they are worthless, the most difficult thing that person can do is reject what the world is saying and hold true to themselves.

McKay affirms his people’s significance and worth by giving them power and agency in the poem. The oppressed are noble (Line 5), precious (Line 6), honored (Line 8), and brave (Line 10). The oppressed people oppose the monstrous animals that oppress them. This framing flips the way the narrative by making the oppressed the heroes and the powerful the villains.

Empowerment and Reversing Unjust Power Dynamics

After affirming the preciousness of the oppressed, the second thing the speaker says about the oppressed is they have power. This power takes time to develop, and it only comes with self-realization. The power to withstand oppressors and fight back defines the poem. This presentation of the oppressed being powerful rejects the traditional binary of powerful/weak or oppressor/oppressed. The poem, instead of embracing those old ways of seeing things, undermines the traditional power structure to inspire the oppressed to take action.

As a socialist, McKay was very class conscious, meaning he actively thought about and understood the power dynamics between the rich and the poor, or the powerful and the powerless. The traditional binary is that the rich have power and the poor do not. However, the rich make up only a small percentage of the population while the poor are the masses. McKay upends this traditional view of societal power by presenting a revolutionary uprising in the poem and by having the powerless achieve their goals.

The main indication of this comes in the movement from the first image of the poem to the second. The first image is:

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot (Lines 1-4).

The second image is:

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead (Lines 5-8)!

The key movement is from the oppressed being penned to the oppressors being constrained. Through the noble actions of the oppressed, the power dynamic shifts, and the oppressors now exist at the mercy of the oppressed. This change gives newfound agency to the oppressed group. It also gives them power. The final image of the poem shows this new power in action:

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back (Lines 10-14)!

The collective punch of the oppressed brings death, making it more powerful than the thousand blows of the oppressors. In the end, when the oppressors press the oppressed to the wall, even in death the oppressed will continue to fight. This is a sort of conquering of death, and it gives the oppressed massive power over the animalistic, cowardly murderers pursuing them.

One thing to note about the final passage above: The speaker says “[t]hough far outnumbered” (Line 10). This suggests the poem concerns a specific group of oppressed people and not all oppressed people. For example, if the poem were about poor people standing up to the rich, that line wouldn’t make sense since most people are not rich. However, the line accords with the fact that the contemporary Black population in America was just a small fraction of that of the white population.

Courage and Encouragement as Sources of Meaning

McKay inspires courage in his readers through tone and structure. Encouraging orders and exclamation points litter the second half of the sonnet. The poem reads like a war general inspiring their troops. The line “O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!” (Line 11) echoes the first stanza of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” when the captain leads his men into a seemingly insurmountable battle. McKay voices this idea in the next line when he says his battalion is outnumbered but brave, and that bravery gives them strength.

McKay is speaking to people who have been bruised and battered, so his poem acknowledges the bleakness of the situation by implying death is inevitable (If We Must Die), but he inspires courage by giving that death purpose. Without a fight, without a look to a better future, death is pointless. This poem promises a kind of immortality that only comes to those who secure it by not letting themselves die for nothing.