Explanation of the poem _If—_, by Rudyard Kipling, Part 1

Hi friends, today we are going to learn a poem written by Rudyard Kipling and the name of the poem is If. Before we proceed to the poem let us have a brief introduction to the poet. Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai on the 30th of December 1865. He was a prolific writer and a journalist. He wrote many stories about the jungle and the beast and you all know that the most famous one of them is the Jungle Book. Now Rudyard Kipling was the youngest and the first British writer to win a Nobel Prize for literature in the year 1907. The poem If by Rudyard Kipling is a didactic poem. Now what is a didactic poem? A didactic poem is a poem written to give instructions and in this poem Rudyard Kipling addresses his son with certain instructions telling him how to be a real man. Now since this is an inspirational and motivational poem it also has a universal appeal. Universal appeal means it is used all throughout the world as a instruction for youth so that they could be men and women of virtue. This poem is written as a single complex sentence in the second person. In this poem Kipling expresses valuable virtues for being a successful man. Now let us have a look at the title. The title itself if expresses a condition. We do know that if is a conjunction that expresses condition and in this poem Rudyard Kipling says that if you exhibit certain qualities as a man you would be successful and would be able to gain great victory. If by Rudyard Kipling has four stanzas and each stanza is of eight lines. Let us begin with the first stanza. In the first stanza the first two lines. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. You keep your head refers to remaining calm or keeping a balance of mind maintaining a balance of mind. Are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Losing theirs means losing their heads or losing their temper or not remaining calm and blaming it on you. Your blaming it on you refers to when others are blaming you for their fault or criticizing you. So the first two lines tell us that the poet wants us to keep our calm even when people around us are losing their cool and we should not lose our heads or our even if others are blaming us or criticizing us for their fault. Moving on to the next two lines. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you and make allowance for their doubting too. Trust yourself here means rely on yourself have faith in yourself when all others or all the people around you are doubting you we should be able to trust ourself and however also give a little thought or consideration to their doubt or try to understand or find the reason for their suspicion. So Rudyard Kipling is telling us by allowing others doubt a little space of thought we can ensure that we are not doing something wrong knowingly or unknowingly. So the next two lines Rudyard Kipling is telling us that we need to have faith in ourselves when people around us are doubting us and give a little space for their doubting so we could find out the reason for their suspicion. Coming to the next lines if you can wait and not be tired of waiting or being lied about don't deal in lies. In these lines the poet is telling us that we need to have patience. We all know that haste makes waste and patience pays off in the long run so we should not lose our patience because we might miss many big opportunities if we are not able to wait. So the poet wants us to be patient and not get tired of waiting or being lied about and don't deal in lies. These lines tell us that there may be many people around us who tell lies about us but we should not indulge in those lies because it is important to speak the truth even if it hurts us. We should refuse to tell lies even if people are lying about us. The next line or being hated don't give way to hate. Many people would hate us or show hatred towards us but we as an individual should not hate them in return. We should show them love and respect and not offer hate for hate. And the last line and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise. The poet tells us that we should not show ourselves to be a very good person or talk too wisely with the common people even if we are possessing such wonderful qualities. We should be able to be normal. We should not be proud of ourself or show off because if we talk too highly and try to be proud we will be making others uncomfortable. So even others may try to prove us wrong at any cost leading to unhealthy competition. So the last line tells us you must never show yourself superior to others nor speak too wisely to people but just be normal. The second stanza the first line if you can dream and not make dreams your master. Now this line tells us that we should have dream we should have ambitions but we should not be guided by our unrealistic dreams. We should be able to give concrete shape to our dreams so that we can be successful because if we have unrealistic dreams we will be only a slave to our dreams and would not be able to achieve great heights. The next line if you can think and not make thoughts your aim. In this line the poet is reminding his son that he should be able to think over a matter but should not make those thoughts his aim or he should ponder over matters without being or losing focus to his goal. The next line if we can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. In life we would come across success and failures, joys and sorrows, good times and bad times. So the poet tells us or reminds us that we should accept both and face both the situations in the same manner. Here triumph refers to success and disaster refers to failure. He further says that we should treat these two imposters. Now he is calling triumph and disaster imposters or cheaters or deceivers and telling us that we should treat both these imposters same way. We must not get too proud or complacent of small successes or neither should we get too grieved about our failure and lose faith and confidence in ourselves. We should accept success and failure in the same stride. Not be disappointed by failures or not to be too proud by our success. Here the poet personifies triumph and disaster as two imposters. Moving on to the next two lines if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools. Very often in life we meet people who misinterpret or even deliberately distort the words we have spoken or twist the words we have spoken to use them in their favor. So the poet is telling us in the following lines that in this case we should not be sad. We should be able to bear the misinterpreted truth also. We should tolerate that ensuring that we have always spoken the truth. Here knaves refers to wicked or bad people. Going on to the last two lines of this stanza or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. You gave your life to means submitted or devoted your entire life in building up the things and stoop here refers to bend down build em em refers to those things which are broken. So what is the poet trying to tell us that we need to remain calm and have patience and hold on our nerves even if we see the favorite things that we have built with effort and time are broken down. We do not need to be disappointed and we should get up and be able to build them up again even if they have been destroyed and we should take our tools and start rebuilding them again. We should have patience and mental toughness. If we have these two qualities we will be able to rebuild them again and these qualities in us will help us to become a man in the real sense. Now the best example I can give you for this is about Sir Isaac Newton. Once the theory papers which Sir Isaac Newton had written were all burnt down in a fire and destroyed but he did not lose hope he started to write them from the beginning. Similarly if things in our life are broken we should pick up the scattered pieces and start building them all over again. This concludes the introduction and explanation of the first two stanzas of the poem If. Stay tuned for part two where the explanation of the last two stanzas will be given. 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