First quatrain: "If we must die..." to "our accursed lot"
Summary
McKay's poem is a 14 line "Shakespearean sonnet," heavily end-stopped and broken up into three quatrains (4 line stanzas) and a final couplet. The first quatrain unfolds as just one sentence, beginning with the eponymous line "If we must die," which will be repeated twice in the poem. These first four lines establish the basic premise of the poem: the speaker and his allies are under attack and are going to die, and the force opposing them is powerful and vicious. While McKay does not give us any concrete details about the speaker, his allies, or their enemies—and indeed the poem contains little sensory language and, notably, no language relating to color—we can deduce that the speaker is almost certainly a man, speaking to men (or mostly men). He holds clear-cut and traditional views about glory, honor, and masculinity, which in this quatrain he mobilizes to show his allies the kind of death they should not have. If they capitulate to the enemy, he argues, they will not only die but also be mocked by their enemy. The speaker considers this kind of submission "inglorious," and while recognizing their "accursèd lot" he begins to persuade his allies that they must resist.
Analysis
Beginning on the word "if" establishes the first sentence, and to some extent the whole poem, as a conditional, with the speaker arguing how they should proceed given the situation they are in. The speaker begins his address with more open, accommodating language ("let us"), and in the beginning he chooses to create negative images of surrender he wants his allies to react against. When he calls this death "inglorious," we get a sense that his criteria for evaluation do not turn on the amount of violence or the loss of life—these are unfortunately a given—but rather the conditions under which they die. While the men are all apparently doomed to die, the speaker does not complain or try to resist this fate. In fact, in a pointedly archaic bit of language, he deems it their "accursèd lot," and he suggests that dwelling on it will only bring them mockery.
To develop his negative portrayal of a capitulating death, the speaker uses comparisons to two animals that reflect the two sides starkly divided in conflict: hogs and dogs. "Hogs / hunted and penned in an inglorious spot" provides his image for being entrapped and led to the slaughter, and the repeated "n" sounds in the line replicate this sense of being huddled together and trapped. Since "hogs" often refers to a castrated male pig, the image is also one of emasculation, implying a loss not only of humanity but of "manliness." To sum up his unnamed antagonist, on the other hand, the speaker invokes dogs, beginning an extended metaphor involving nonhuman creatures that will run throughout the poem. This image of "mad and hungry dogs" suggests not a worthy, cunning opponent but a crazed, bloodthirsty, subhuman mass, and "making their mock" further emphasizes the enemy's viciousness and cruelty—they will add insult on top of injury. By creating such a powerfully negative image in the beginning of the poem, the speaker prepares his audience to later be convinced of something that might otherwise be quite difficult to accept: that they must die by facing their enemy directly.
