While I was researching poems for my poetry presentation, one that I came across and liked very much is “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay. Unfortunately, someone already did it and apparently I was gone that day, which is sad because it would have been an interesting discussion. To refresh people’s memory, here it 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.
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!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
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!
Now that we’ve finished White Boy Shuffle, I’m curious how the speaker in this poem would get along with the Gunnar at the end of the book. Both are similar in the way that they both think about death. Also sidenote, I feel like in the end, there are two versions of Gunnar: one version is his thoughts and the other is the way the public sees him as a messiah of some sort. So Messiah Gunnar is pretty similar to the speaker. He is speaking to a crowd and talking about his own suicide, but the crowd takes it to mean that he believes that people should commit suicide to protest society. The speaker is also accepting death by fighting back and saying that if we have to die, it should be for a good reason and fighting an enemy. Messiah Gunnar’s believers are in a way doing the same thing, but their enemy is not physically in front of them, which changes the whole situation, because they have a choice, whereas the speaker is saying if we have no other choice. But these people do have a choice. There’s also Gunnar’s thoughts that he keeps to himself. With these he just wants out of this life and he is thinking why bother to fight if it won’t change anything. The speaker in the poem does not agree, and because of that, even though he is talking about death, it gives the poem a more hopeful outlook, which is a much better way to look at things.
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ReplyDeleteGreat post! I had completely forgotten about that poem but I'm glad you brought it back up. I think the speaker of the poem would agree for the most part with Gunnar. The only thing that makes me think the speaker wouldn't is how the speaker wants to die nobly, fighting back.
ReplyDeleteI like these ideas. It is kind of odd to think about how Gunnar's ideas about death are different from the poem's speaker. I wonder if the disconnect has something to do with the time periods, considering Claude McKay's poem was written a lot earlier than The White Boy Shuffle? As you mention, there's a lot of hope in the poem, but the book seems to be devoid of most of it. Could it be that the fact that things hadn't changed enough since the Harlem Renaissance that the situation just seems more hopeless?
ReplyDeleteThat's a really interesting point and one I hadn't considered. It does make sense that Gunnar would think that way, that people have tried for years and nothing changed so why should he try.
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