Comparison If We Must Die by Claude McKay and I Too by Langston Hughes

This poem is a sonnet and comprises fourteen lines and a rhyming scheme. It consists of three quatrains which include; the rhyming schemes a, ba, b followed by c, dc, d and the last but not least e, f e, f. The poem also contains one couplet of completion, and that is g, g. The poem, however, is not separated into various stanzas, and therefore it has a stitch structure. It is evident that when a line I the poem elongates, an enjambment is utilized to the following line to enable the poem readers to comprehend the exact meaning of every line. The speaker in this poem is probably Hughes. He is speaking to the world and letting all know that he is an American too.

He expresses himself as a brother but a darker one. He uses the pronoun ‘they’ to isolate himself from the majority who are white. He depicts segregation and calls out the other African Americans who are under duress to endure. ' The other similarity between the two poems is that they are both hopeful and look into a better future. The ‘If we must die’ speaker in the 6th line depicts; ‘So that our precious blood may not be shed. ' This is an indication that after the bloodshed then full realization will fall on the oppressors and they will realize their mistakes and both whites and blacks will be equal. In the poem ‘I, Too' the speaker writes; ‘they’ll see how beautiful I am, and be ashamed— I, too, am America.

’ This is a look at the future and seeing a better one and that one day the whites and the blacks would be equals. Therefore, these poems may not be relevant in the context in which they were written then, but they are surely relevant in the context or state of affairs that exist in the modern day slavery and racism. How the poems serve as a form of Resistance The poem ‘If we must die’ is directly a call for resisting the majority oppression and a –wake- up call for the black people to stand up for themselves. Literature can change the world and therefore becomes a good way to resist or a kind of resistance as it reaches people of the same view widely and the oppressors get to know what is in the mind of the oppressed.