The first 4 lines of “If We Must Die” establish the poem’s theme and introduce its form.
As the poem opens, the speaker outlines a desperate situation. Using apostrophe, the speaker addresses a group of oppressed people who seem to be living under the threat of certain death. (And the speaker is part of this group: he or she addresses them as “we” in the first line.) Given the death they face, the speaker argues that the group must not die “like hogs.” This simile shows the speaker's fear that the group will be slaughtered like domesticated animals—“hunted" as though they had been raised simply to be killed. In other words, the speaker is afraid that their deaths will strip them of their dignity and independence—and, more importantly, of their humanity.
However, a parallel figure of speech suggests that the oppressors’ violence will also strip the oppressors themselves of their own humanity. Using a metaphor, the speaker describes the oppressors as “mad and hungry dogs.” Both metaphor and simile personify the animals in question. The dogs, for instance, “mock” the “accursed lot” of the hogs. The combination of metaphor and personification lets the speaker vividly show how the oppressors have no pity for the people they slaughter; indeed, chillingly, they find their suffering humorous. No one, it seems, is particularly human within such a destructive society.
Even from just these first lines, it's already clear that “If We Must Die” describes a dark and desperate situation. However, they also establish the ways in which the poem itself is elegant and polished. Throughout, the speaker uses refined diction such as "accurséd"—some of it already old-fashioned by the time McKay wrote the poem in 1919. The form of the poem is also both elegant and old-fashioned, a Shakespearean sonnet. This form dates to the middle ages and it became popular in English in the 16th century. The form was used by some of McKay’s literary heroes, including poets like John Milton. By writing a Shakespearean sonnet, McKay proves that a contemporary Black writer can match the prominent dead white men of English poetry, on their own turf, using their forms.
The speaker shows off their own literary skill, using alliteration in marked fashion, as in the /h/ sound in “hogs,” “hunted,” and “hungry.” In using alliteration, however, the speaker is not just showing off: the alliteration also underlines the connection between the dogs’ hunger and their hunting, which in turn reduces the people the poem addresses to the status of “hogs.”
The poem also follows the rhyme scheme and meter of a Shakespearean sonnet. Its first 4 lines are rhymed ABAB and are in iambic pentameter, with the occasional metrical substitution (like the trochee in the first foot of line 2, “Hunted”). These lines are enjambed in an irregular fashion: the first line is enjambed and the next 3 are end-stopped, with a caesura midway through the first line. The pause the caesura creates separates out the poem's opening phrase—“If we must die”—as particularly important and so prepares the reader for the return of that same phrase in line 5.