Claude Mckay And Harlem Renaissance
“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.” ― Claude McKay
One of the most important authors of the Harlem Renaissance was Jamaican born Claude McKay, who was one governmental reformer, the writer, an essayist and a poet. Claude was mindful of how to make his family consistently in mainstream society by writing for the people. Although McKay’s arsenal he had strong poems, the poem that included such radical genre is Harlem dark – ‘If we must die’. Intriguing and still chilling McKay evokes intense and strong emotions at any who interprets it. Inspired by intense race riots, it serves as a motivating anthem example of the entire society. McKay’s Graphic and full of vengeance poem is resistant, problematic and full of dignity.
“Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”
The period of rebel in the disrespect towards African Americans recived because the color of the skin they were born with. The metaphors of dog and hogs created the implication of people helpless being attacked.
“Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, and for their thousand blows deal one death-blow” lines10-11 –McKay
Resistance with pride, even though the group of oppressed people were outnumbered they must not give up without a fight, show them how brave you are. Match violence with their violence, don’t give them full power of you. McKay acknowledges that the group must die but die “fighting back”. Throughout the poem Claude says repeatedly that Africans must be ready to suffer for their rights. This is in comparison to some African-American individuals, Booker T. Washington, who thought that good hearted whites could assist the colored people and that those Africans should accept their help.
There is a productive mix of elements that one could find in peasantry and those found in the military environment. He constructs the place of soldiers in action, but these conditions and the imaginative mind of the audience informs that the struggle is to take the displaced and slave people. He talks about being haunted and written as would an animal or even soldier being pursued by the force in the fight place, and beyond this, one may remember the hopeless soul caught in the secret rush to freedom, flushed out by dogs, drawn, and returned to the cage of no liberty. The group of oppressed men can only decide how they die. They can either can die like men or like “Hogs”. Dying like men allows them measure of dignity as result of bravery and dying as “Heroes”.
If we must die was published in 1919, written as response to “Red Summer” mob attacks by White Americans upon African Americans. Problematic between both races which hinted at a race war. People assumed it was about whites against black’s but McKay didn’t want what the true meaning of the poem to getting lost behind what wasn’t the real reality of it. The poem spoke in general about fighting for what you believe in and humanity.
