🔰“If—" By Rudyard Kipling | Analysis of the Poem That Changed My Life

I'm telling y'all, I was not a fan of poetry, but I remember my 11th grade English class, this was the poem that the teacher chose to cover. And it hit me hard. What is up, YouTube? It's your boy, Kendrick Youngblood. Welcome to another one of my poetry analyses. I'm really excited about this one in particular, because this is arguably my most favorite poem ever. All right, so let's get into it. This poem is If by Rudyard Kipling. I'm going to start off by actually reading it aloud. For those of you who are already accustomed to the poem, you've already read it before and you don't want to listen to me read it, I'm going to provide a time code that you can skip to for the beginning of the analysis. But for those of you who would like to hear it read aloud, here we go. 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 imposters 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 them 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 60 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. All right, so some quick background information about the poet. Not that it's necessary to understand the poem at all, but I think it's just cool to know. His full name is Joseph Rudyard Kipling, and he was an English journalist, a short story writer, a poet, and a novelist. He was born in India, and that sort of inspired a lot of the works that came about in terms of his fictional writing. Some of his works of fiction include The Jungle Book, Kim, The Man Who Would Be King. So these are some famous stories, you've probably heard of at least one of them. I found all this information online, it's not hard to find, but I think it's really cool to know. Furthermore, the poem itself, If, was found in actually one of his historical fantasy novels, and it's called Rewards and Fairies. If you actually want to look at where the poem specifically is within the novel, just go to the chapter titled Brothers Square Toes, because that's where it had its first debut to the public. Okay, without further ado, let's actually get started on the analysis. If is a didactic poem, meaning it was designed to teach readers. And as you can see, the speaker is trying to show their son how to conquer life and be a man by teaching the son stoicism. Stoicism is merely the art of being unmoved or unfazed by events that might happen in one's life, whether pleasurable or painful. And each line of the poem actually defines an element of stoicism. So keep that in mind when I go through each line. The entire poem is one extremely long conditional statement. Conditional statements are things such as like, if this happens, then that happens. Y'all see what I'm saying? And the if part is really what stretches out the conditional statement, because there's a lot of repetition of if you can, if you can, if you can. And this use of repeating a phrase over and over is called anaphora. The point of this use of anaphora is to actually build suspense and curiosity for what the then statement will be. Each stanza is an octet, which means it possesses eight lines. And the rhyme scheme for each octet is A, B, A, B, C, D, C, D. There are many rhymes within this work that exist between more than one syllable at a time. And these are known as multisyllabic rhymes. Examples of multisyllabic rhymes within the poem would be waiting, hating, master, disaster, spoken, broken, winnings, beginning, sin you, in you, virtue, hurt you, minute, in it. Y'all see what I'm saying? All right, so now let's actually pick apart the elements of stoicism that the speaker is trying to teach their son. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. All right, so this attribute specifically would be level-headedness, right? Keeping internal peace or self-control, even when like everything around you seems out of control. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. Here, the speaker is trying to teach the son self-confidence or security in oneself, even when others don't believe in you, right? If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, patience. Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, honesty, integrity. Or being hated, don't give way to hating. All right, so here this line is particularly interesting. It seems like the speaker is trying to teach their son love, but the speaker isn't specifically saying love your haters, just don't give way to hating. So the way I like to interpret this is more so in the lens of stoicism, in the sense that the speaker might really be trying to teach the son non-impulsivity. So not being so reactionary, because the instinct if someone's hating on you is to, you know, show hate back. Or if someone's criticizing you or being cruel to you, to express vitriol. But here it's specifically saying don't give in to that temptation. So don't be so impulsive, don't be so reactionary. And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise. Okay, now this seems like some weird advice for the speaker to give their son, because shouldn't you want your son to look good and talk wise? I think what the speaker is trying to teach is a certain characteristic that a lot of stoics possess, in which they are unassuming and non-threatening in terms of their demeanor. And this is particularly important because people will often feel inferior to you if you seem like you're too good, you're too smooth, you're too clean, stuff like that. And if they feel that inferiority because they're in your presence, they might actually view you as a threat. All right, by not looking too good or talking too wise, you immediately lower your threat level among those who would otherwise feel inferior to you. If you can dream and not make dreams your master, if you can think and not make thoughts your aim. Here the speaker is trying to teach their son the balance between having vision and action. So simply thinking of your goals and actually pursuing your goals, right? If you make dreams your master and you make thoughts your aim, you'll never complete any of your goals. You'll simply fantasize about them and get nowhere. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. This line is my favorite in the entire poem. All right, and this is pretty much stoicism by definition. The whole poem is wrapped up in these two lines specifically. The lesson here is that wins and losses only seem to represent good and bad respectively, but in reality they are both merely results of the same task or game. We simply deem one good and one bad, but at the end of the day they're just results. So why should your response to them be different? Our response to winning and losing should therefore be the same. In other words, it is what it is. 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 them up with worn out tools. So knaves is referring to dishonest people. That's just what a knave is. It's a dishonest person. But this mention of stooping and building up something that was broken in your life with worn out tools, this is expressing an element of stoicism in which you are unwavering in your commitment towards completing a task. I believe that the worn out tools in this case are tried and true methods of success. Because they're tried and true, they're worn out in terms of their use, but they're only worn out because they work, right? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Why use another tool when this one is working over and over? So examples of such worn out tools would be diligence, consistency, patience, right? All of these are elements that are constantly used by those who reach success. So they're worn out in that sense. 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. So this is pretty much talking about taking risks without regrets. Pitch and toss is a gambling game, all right? And losing all of your winnings in one turn sucks, all right? But this often happens in life. Sometimes we have to make a gamble, you know? Maybe in terms of business, right? If you're an entrepreneur, you know it might be a risk to invest in this thing, but it could be the difference in a lot of success and a lot of failure. You take that risk and you fail. You end up losing all of your investments, stuff like that. That can be really hard. But to go as far as to say and never breathe a word about your loss, just go back to the beginning, go back to the drawing board and keep moving forward. That is really, really hard to do. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone. So after you've given everything you can, your blood, sweat and tears on that grind to reach your goals, you need to have your goals achieved in such a way to where it leaves an impact long after you're dead. So after you've left this earth and stuff, is your impact still being felt? The speaker is trying to teach the son forward thinking, leaving a legacy, things like that. And so hold on when there's nothing in you except the will which says to them, hold on. Here the speaker is trying to teach their son resilience when you have nothing left to give, when you feel like you're just out of energy or strength, continuing to hold on. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, that's moral excellence, or walk with kings nor lose the common touch, humility. If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, having thick skin, if all men count with you, but none too much. All right, so this is a weird one, right? We don't really use this language nowadays, counting with someone. What that pretty much means is if people count with you, they find you dependable or reliable. All right, so that's a good thing. However, too much of that can be bad. All right, because you don't want to be living for others. You don't want to be so dependable or so reliable that you're not even living for yourself at that point. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, so that is giving 100% effort to make the most of the time you have. Yours is the earth and everything that's in it. And which is more, you will be a man, my son. So these last two lines, this is the then statement that the anaphora was building up to. So the repetition of the, if you can, if you can, if you can. These last two lines express the reward for mastering stoicism, succeeding in life, conquering life, but then also becoming a man. All right, prior to hearing this poem, I'm telling y'all, I was not a fan of poetry. It wasn't for me. All I'd ever hear was Shakespeare. I would be ragging on Shakespeare. Shakespeare is great. Don't get me wrong, but like, it just wasn't for me as a teenager. All right. But I remember my 11th grade English class, this was the poem that the teacher chose to cover. And it hit me hard. I was struggling with a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. I had so much aggression inside of me. I, I lacked self-control in so many ways. You know what I'm saying? I was pretty much the opposite of what the speaker is trying to get their son to be like. And if anyone needed this poem, it was me. I was just so confused about how to excel in life, how to succeed in everything. And this poem really just gave me the answers I needed, you know? So I started practicing on each of the elements I just expressed to you. I made sure to practice each and every one of them, trying to be level-headed, trying to be unassuming in my demeanor, trying to balance vision and action. Like, don't just think about your goals and dream about them and fantasize them. Actually pursue them. Don't make dreams your master. Don't make thoughts your aim. You see what I'm saying? Like all of these things really hit me hard. And this was the first poem because most poems up until that point for me were very, very vague and hard to understand and didn't speak to me on any level whatsoever. And it's something I go back to every now and then when I'm feeling confused or when I'm feeling like I can't achieve my goals or I don't know how to, I look back at this poem and it reminds me. All right. So I hope you all enjoyed. I know this was a bit of a long video for me, but I think it was much needed. I'll try to do more poetry analyses in the future. So make sure you comment below what poems you'd like me to analyze. If I get to it, I'll get to it. But yeah, thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Deuces.