Редьярд Киплинг "Если..."

If

Brief Biography

• Born: 30 December 1865

• Died: 18 January 1936

• Birthplace: Bombay, India

• Best known as: author of The Jungle Book

What is there to say about the TITLE?

What’s it about ?

• The poem offers guidance from an older to a younger man through the use of the conditional (IF) throughout.
• Hopes and fears are important, but Kipling perhaps emphasises the importance of not hoping or fearing too much.
• This is a DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

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:

• How many times is the word IF used in the whole poem?
• What’s the effect of all of this repetition? Why is it used?

• In this stanza, where are the imperatives and what is the effect of using them?
• Can you notice anything about the metre?

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:

5. Where’s the personification in this stanza? What do you notice about it?

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!’

6. Why is the line about risk included?

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!

7. Now look at the repeated use of the pronoun ‘you’/’your’ – what is the effect of this?

Can you sum up the message of this poem?

• the poem offers guidance from an older to a younger man through the use of the conditional throughout
• hopes and fears are important, but Kipling perhaps emphasises the importance of not hoping or fearing too much
• the poem has a very regular rhyme and rhythm which works together with the repeated pattern of ‘If’, ‘And’, and ‘Or’ at the beginnings of lines to emphasise future possibilities
• there is, however, some variation in the rhyming words which are sometimes single syllable words (‘lies’ and ‘wise’), and sometimes two or more (‘waiting’ and ‘hating’). Kipling uses ‘you’ and ‘you’ as the first rhyme stressing the didactic nature of the poem mirroring the narrator’s hopes and fears for the future
• it works by a series of contrasts: trust and doubt, triumph and disaster, kings and common touch
• ‘ Triumph’ and ‘Disaster’ are personified as if to indicate that they can take a human form but nonetheless are ‘impostors’
• the poem builds up to its climax of the last two lines, emphasised by the exclamation mark which shows the fulfilment of hopes for the future
• the capitalisation of ‘Man’ adds to its significance as an aspiration
• ‘ my son’ adds a personal touch at the end, but it could be argued that the hopes and fears in the poem are for every young man.