Detailed commentary and analysis by Claire's Notes of the poem 'If - ' by Rudyard Kipling
Edexcel iGCSE
"If" by Rudyard Kipling is a didactic poem offering advice on how to navigate life's challenges and achieve personal integrity. The speaker, likely a father figure, outlines various virtues such as patience, resilience, humility, and self-confidence. The poem emphasises the importance of maintaining composure in adversity, treating triumph and disaster equally, and staying true to oneself amidst external pressures. Themes include maturity, moral fortitude, and the ideal qualities of a leader. The final reward for embodying these virtues is ultimate personal fulfilment and maturity, encapsulated in the line, "you'll be a Man, my son!"
If by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!
0:00 Historical and biographical context
2:31 Structure
7:35 Title
8:15 Stanza 1 Line-by-line analysis
9:20 Stanza 2 Line-by-line analysis
11:58 Stanza 3 Line-by-line analysis
13:34 Stanza 4 Line-by-line analysis
My poetry videos all have the same structure: I start by putting the poem into its historical and biographical context where this enhances its understanding and give a short summary of the poem itself; I then look at the poem in its entirety, picking out structural features, such as metre (rhythm), any rhyming and patterns in language which the poet uses; I finish by going through the poem on a line-by-line basis, giving definitions of words and offering an interpretation of the poet’s words with justification. Most of the terminology I use (in green) is provided with a definition below, so even if you haven’t come across it before, you should still be able to understand the points I am making.
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About me:
I have been an English teacher and private tutor for more than 20 years.
Please note that any literature analysis is highly subjective and may disagree with analysis by another person. All interpretations are valid if they can be justified by reference to the text. This interpretation is my own: it is not exhaustive and there are alternatives!
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