Homework on ‘ If’ by Rudyard Kipling.
What relationship can you draw between the themes and ideas of the poem and its form/ structure.
‘ If’ is a poem written by Rudyard Kipling. The poem is aimed at advicing his son or any male on how to be a man, how to succed in life and in other owrds how to be the ‘ perfect man’ which is unattainable. Kipling himself knew that these tasks will be immpossible to meet up with fully, which is why I believe he named this poem ‘If’ rather than ‘How To Become A Man’.
The main theme in this peom is about advicing a someone in a younger generation and teaching him moral. The theme and the structure are somehow entwined with each other. The more you decode one, the better you understand the other. ‘If’is a poem of 4 stanzas made up of 8 lines respectively. I think Kipling made the poem organised by arranging it into accurate parts to express becoming a man as a stage when your filthy habits are discarded and replaced with the habit of being prim and proper. The general shape of the poem is very uneven; lengths of lines vary from line to line. I believe this was done to show that life is not a straight road, there will be bends but you will surely get where you are going. As you read the poem, must peole might get the idea that if the do all these things then they won’t encounter any disasters. Because of this, Kipling arranged this poem unevenly to show that even though you may take his advice, life is still very unpredictable, and things may be harder than they seem. Kipling writes the whole poem in form of a question, continusiously repeating ‘if’ showing that there is doubt in his mind that this person will be able to live up to these tasks. If the person were to live up to this tasks, they have shown perseverance which is one of the themes of this poem. Kipling uses the word ‘if’ repeatedly to show the reader indirectly that you need to be determined inorder to be a man.
