analysis of a poem in terms of themes and rhetorical strategies

analysis of a poem in terms of themes and rhetorical strategies


Just as the eighteenth-century slave narrators revised the trope of the talking book, writers in the black tradition have repeated and revised figures, tropes, and themes in prior works, leading to formal links in a chain of tradition that connects the slave narratives to [twentieth-century works]. [L]iterary representations must be learned through repetition and revision. The African American literary tradition exists as a formal entity because of this historical practice.[W]orks of literature created by African Americans often extend, or signify upon, other works of the black tradition, structurally and thematically (The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 1997: xxxvi)

Carefully analyze the poem If We Must Die‚ by Claude McKay in terms of its themes and its rhetorical strategies. Explain how and why this poem is connected to the works of the vernacular tradition and to the writings of Henry Highland Garnet An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America. You are required to use secondary sources. ( The Book Reference is: The Norton Anthology of African American Literature: Henry Louis Gates Jr.and Nellie Y. McKay. In this book you will find all these required readings)