What symbols did Claude Mckay use in the poem?

The speaker's simile "like hogs" invokes animals trapped and led to the slaughter, and the comparison to pigs invokes all the connotations of pigs as dirty, fat, and dull to suggest a kind of degraded state. However, since "hog" often refers specifically to a castrated male pig, the word also takes on a more specific resonance of emasculation. Indeed, the speaker's only other use of "like" in the poem is in the simile "like men," which creates a direct comparison between these symbolic states. If hogs suggest an "inglorious," shameful state that is weak and subhuman, "men" suggests not just humanity in general but specifically the traditional ideal of "being a man." In urging his allies to fight, the speaker encourages them to live up to this conception of masculinity, dying in a manner worthy of "men" so that—unlike hogs—they will be remembered after they are gone.

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Running through the poem is a characterization of the enemy as non-human (and inhumane). While McKay subtly shifts the comparison as the poem continues—first dogs, then monsters, then the more neutral "foe," and then finally "pack"—the implication of a bloodthirsty savage mass remains constant throughout. While the dogs clearly symbolize the aggressive and predatory nature of the enemy, this extended metaphor also serves just as importantly as a technique of dehumanization. If we interpret the speaker as a black man and his allies as African Americans facing dehumanization and violence from whites, then these nonhuman descriptions turn the tables on their racist foe, showing that it is in fact the enemy who is not fully human.