summary of poem IF
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Please write a summary of the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling.
Please write a summary of the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling.
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SCHULZIE eNotes educator | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR
The poem is a father defining for his son the qualities of a good man.. He is setting the parameters or boundaries for his son and giving him a goal to achieve. The poem deals with life’s challenges and how to deal with them.
Stanza one deals with being confident about the decisions you make and taking responsibility for those decisions. If others, who cannot take that responsibility for themselves react negatively, you will be patient with them and not reduce yourself to their level by telling lies or dealing in hate. However, don’t ever think you are above anyone else.
Stanza Two states that it is good to dream, but don’t let your dreams control your life. It is good to think, but don’t just think and not put those thoughts into action. You will experience triumph and disasters in your life, but don’t take them seriously because they are not the substance of life, they are the extremes. If you hear things you said misused or things you have done destroyed, you need to be able to pick yourself up and rebuild them with everything that you have left in you.
Stanza Three counsels don’t be afraid to take risks and possibly lose everything. If you do lose everything, don’t talk about it, just start all over again at the beginning. When you are tired and exhausted and your body just feels like it can’t continue on, use your mind and your will to tell yourself to “Hold on” and persevere. Push through it.
Stanza four deals with a person’s reaction to others. You need to be able to talk to large groups of people and yet not let them influence your belief in what is right,wrong,...
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Answer:
For the theme, as already told, the poem basically tells us the conditions that we should meet to succeed in life and make this life happy and a beautiful one. The whole poem is written in a single complex sentence. So all the subordinate clauses begin with ‘if’ and the main clause concluding the entire theme comes at the end, and the poem ends with a full stop.
This structure of the poem was important to achieve the conditional goal. The poet speaks of the achievement at the end, after discussing all the requirements to reach there. This structure is actually symbolic in suggesting that you can get the rewards only after you have fulfilled the preconditions. Moreover, this makes the readers eager to know what would happen when we meet all these conditions, thus retaining the curiosity and interest till the end.
And, as the main theme of the poem is a combination of so many if’s, the title ‘If’ is an apt one for the poem.