If by Rudyard Kipling

 

If

By Rudyard Kipling

 

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 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 wornout 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 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!

 

 

This poem by Rudyard Kipling was published in 1910 in his book ‘Rewards and Fairies’. The speaker advises his how to become a real man in this world. He advises his son to keep his wits about him and be composed all the time even when every one around him losing theirs. The poem is an advice from a father to his son about an idealized kind of self-sufficient male virtue. It is heavily inspired from ancient Greek philosophy that encourages people to live uninfluenced by pleasure or pain.

 

Summary

If you can stay calm when everyone around you is losing their head and holding you responsible for their panic; if you can be confident when no one trusts you while still taking other people’s concern into consideration; if you can be patient; if you can avoid lying even when lie about you; if you cannot hate anyone even when they hate you; if you can be virtuous in these ways, but still not think too highly of yourself.

If you can have big dreams without being a servant to them; if you can analyse things but do not get lost in analysis; if you can take your victory and loss with same composure and treat them as temporary; if your sincere words are twisted by the cunning to deceive the simple; or you can watch the work of your lifetime spoiled and you get right back and start rebuilding it with your worn-out tools;

If you can risk everything you have achieved on a single gamble and lose it and start again from zero without complaining; if you can push yourself to total mental and physical exhaustion and still keep going when you have nothing left save your will power to support and withstand

If you can be with masses without losing your own character, or among the kings and still be humble, if neither your enemies nor your friends can hurt you, if you treat everyone with respect without idolizing anyone; if you can fill every second of the minute with your full effort, then you will own the world and every thing in it- and more than that you will become a true man, my son.

Themes

Composure and Self-Restraint

The poem is an advice from a father to his son regarding how he should deal with life. The speaker advises his son to deal everything in life with composure and always show self-control, integrity and humility. Whatever happens in life, whether he succeeds or face failure, he should not let both go to his head. The ability to remain calm in all circumstances and self-control make it possible to lead a respectable and dignified life.

It is very important to keep one’s cool especially when others are losing theirs. It is necessary to respond with composure and not to give way to negativity or hate. Moreover, self-control and patience allow one to remain reasonable and diligent even in the face of worst circumstances. This allows to rebuild one’s life in the face of utter failure. Even if everything goes to shambles, the person will have the ability to regroove and start again.

The speaker also advises his son that he should not feel proud about his virtues. He asks him to distance himself from vanity in favour of wisdom. The speaker is basically saying that one should be moderate, neither too confident nor too modest. It is only those who overcome vice and vanity are capable of undergoing through hardship.

It is then clear that it is only through composed personality that one can attain strength of character and integrity. The speaker believes that self-restraint and discipline will turn the boy into a true man. It should be kept in mind that these ideas about composure and self-restraint align with the stereotypically British ‘stiff upper lip’ (the idea that one should be resilient in the face of adversity. This was a particularly popular view in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when a number of British poets embraced Ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism, which urged indifference to both pain and pleasure. This is what the speaker tells his son to adopt when he asks him to be moderate in the face of both success and failure.

Manhood and Masculinity

To the Edwardian-era speaker of "If—," manhood isn't something one is born with, but a quality one earns. The poem reflects some rather old-fashioned ideas about masculinity; after all, the self-sufficiency and levelheadedness the speaker describes would be virtues in any person, and marking them out as specifically male feels antiquated and sexist. Yet poem also doesn’t just grant every man these qualities, and instead suggests that men must earn manhood. Masculinity, the poem insists, is a demanding goal that one must strive for, and the few who achieve virtuous manhood enjoy a rock-solid sense of self. To be a capital-M "Man," in this speaker's view, is a virtue, an achievement, and its own reward.

The whole poem is built around a set of goalposts, standards of good behavior that a boy has to achieve in order to become a "Man." Manhood isn't inborn or natural, the poem suggests, but a state one achieves through self-sufficiency, self-mastery, and stability. To be a man, the "son" the speaker addresses must learn to "keep [his] head," "lose, and start again at [his] beginnings," and "talk with crowds and keep [his] virtue": in other words, he has to develop an inner security that makes him brave, centered, and unflappable. The sheer length of the poem's list of instructions suggests that this is hard work!

The rewards of this kind of difficult self-mastery, the speaker suggests, are great: being a "Man" means even more than having "the Earth and everything that's in it" at one's disposal. Manhood, in this poem's view, is its own reward, providing its possessors with an unshakeable sense of self. The speaker's capitalization of the word "Man" suggests that he sees manhood as an honorable title: becoming a "Man" is like earning a degree or being knighted.

To the modern reader, all this might sound narrow and sexist, since it seems to single certain good human qualities out as specifically male. But this vision of a distinct and virtuous masculinity fits right into the speaker's Edwardian worldview, in which gender roles were clear, separate, and rigid—and male authority was taken for granted. Reading masculinity as an achievement, the speaker makes it clear that, in his view, the powers and res