Essay Comparing If We Must Die And Harlem

While both poems address the issue of racial oppression, the settings of each poem reflect the poets’ solutions to their immediate situations. In the poem “If We Must Die”, it is clear that the people are at war. They are facing unknown and powerful enemies, so they will die eventually. The poet depicts a gruesome scene in which the soldiers “die” and “shed blood” to show how much suffering they have endured. The soldiers are exhausted and despairing since they know they have no chance to win. However, surprisingly, this poem serves as an inspiring speech to the hopeless soldiers in the war. The speaker stands up and analyzes the situation to the soldiers, but he refuses to be defeated. Then, he elicits the soldiers’ emotions and picks up their

In contrast, in the poem “Harlem”, the setting is ambiguous, which the poet uses to lead the readers to experience this state. It only contains several specific images that describe how it feels when a dream is deferred. Therefore, the poem stimulates the readers’ imagination using an ambiguous setting. However, from the images the poet offers, the only outcome of the deferred dreams is negative or destructive. These images convey to the readers that how miserable it can be when a dream is deferred. From “raisin” to “explode”, the speaker’ s conveys increased desperation. At the end of the poem, even the speaker does not provide an answer to the question, he only leaves a lethal sentence: “Or does it exploding? (11)” After his long period of oppression, the speaker finally wants to take action. However, it is only a possibility, not a guarantee. This makes the readers wonder whether the speaker will engage in dangerous behavior or not. As for the whites who defer the speaker’s dream, they will feel restless and threatened. Thus, through these two poems, it is obvious that the poets hold different actions to racial oppression: McKay decides to take action while Hughes just provides a threatened