Critical analysis of if by rudyard kipling
Answers
As an evocation of Victorian-era stoicism—the "stiff upper lip" self-discipline, which popular culture rendered into a British national virtue and character trait, "If—" remains a cultural touchstone. The British cultural-artefact status of the poem is evidenced by the parodies of the poem, and by its popularity among Britons.
T. S. Eliot included the poem in his 1941 collection A Choice of Kipling's Verse.
In India, a framed copy of the poem was affixed to the wall before the study desk in the cabins of the officer cadets at the National Defence Academy at Pune, and Indian Naval Academy at Ezhimala.
In Britain, the third and fourth lines of the second stanza of the poem: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same" are written on the wall of the players' entrance to the Centre Court at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, where the Wimbledon Championships are held. (These same lines appear at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York, where the US Open was played.) The first verse is set, in granite setts, into the pavement of the promenade in Westward Ho! in Devon.
The Indian writer Khushwant Singh considered the poem "the essence of the message of The Gita in English"...