BACOLOD CITY COLLEGE

Bacolod City, Negros Occidental

EL 114 Survey of Afro-Asian Literature

POEM

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 worn-out 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

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!

ANALYSIS:

The poem “IF” by Rudyard Kipling basically shows a father giving some wise life advice to his son as it
ended with “my son!”, but if we put it into another context, it can be Kipling who wanted to show us that
we are a man who was easily driven by our triumphs and failures. He was trying to convey the virtue of
humility in our ups and downs. It provides us an overview that life is sometimes not the same as what we
expected to be and there is a lot of circumstances, but we should not let obstacles over rule it. We need to
balance ourselves in every successes and failures that we have. The poem also trying to emphasize what
we should do and what we should avoid.
“IF” - By Rudyard Kipling has a total of 32 lines. It is composed of four stanzas in octet, with a rhyme
scheme of ABABCDCD.
The poem “IF” is mainly written in iambic pentameter. For example, in line number 2 of the first stanza.
u / u / u / u / u /
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

But as you take a closer look at the whole poem, you will notice a pattern. All of the even-numbered lines
(2, 4, 6, 8, 10 …) contain ten syllables that was concluded as an iambic pentameter, but the odd-numbered
lines (1, 3, 7, 9 …) have an extra syllable. For example in the first line of the poem.
u / u / u / u / u / u
If you can keep your head when all about you
The extra syllable that was found in a standard metrical unit is called Hypermetrical.
 Most of the line is didactic because it intends to give us views and teach us lessons. Kipling also used
figures of speech like personification. From the line “And treat those two impostors just the same;” he
used “impostor” (a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for
fraudulent gain.), and refers it to Triumphs and Disaster.

SHORT STORY
Title: The Masque of the Red Death
Author: Edgar Allan Poe

SUMMARY
A disease known as the Red Death plagues the fictional country where this tale is set, and it causes its
victims to die quickly and gruesomely. Even though this disease is spreading rampantly, the prince,
Prospero, feels happy and hopeful. He decides to lock the gates of his palace in order to fend off the
plague, ignoring the illness ravaging the land. After several months, he throws a fancy masquerade ball.
For this celebration, he decorates the rooms of his house in single colors. The easternmost room is
decorated in blue, with blue stained-glass windows. The next room is purple with the same stained-glass
window pattern. The rooms continue westward, according to this design, in the following color
arrangement: green, orange, white, and violet. The seventh room is black, with red windows. Also, in this
room stands an ebony clock. When the clock rings each hour, its sound is so loud and distracting that
everyone stops talking and the orchestra stops playing. When the clock is not sounding, though, the rooms
are so beautiful and strange that they seem to be filled with dreams, swirling among the revelers. Most
guests, however, avoid the final, black-and-red room because it contains both the clock and an ominous
ambience.
At midnight, a new guest appears, dressed more ghoulishly than his counterparts. His mask looks like the
face of a corpse, his garments resemble a funeral shroud, and his face reveals spots of blood suggesting
that he is a victim of the Red Death. Prospero becomes angry that someone with so little humor and levity
would join his party. The other guests, however, are so afraid of this masked man that they fail to prevent
him from walking through each room. Prospero finally catches up to the new guest in the black-and-red
room. As soon as he confronts the figure, Prospero dies. When other party-goers enter the room to attack
the cloaked man, they find that there is nobody beneath the costume. Everyone then dies, for the Red
Death has infiltrated the castle. “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death” have at last triumphed.

ANALYSIS:
The story entitled “The Masque of the Red Death” talks about the reality of life in which death is
inevitable. Nobody can escape death even how rich or who you are, because human beings are destine to
die and we will never know when or how will it happen, It will come in the most unexpected moment-
like a thief.
Settings: The story takes place in Prospero’s Castle which is describe as deeply secluded castellated
abbeys. There is no specific date when did it happen but it was in the midst of a plague which devastated
their country.
Characters:

 Prince Prospero- He was a wealthy man who is living in a castle. He isolated himself not to be
harm by the Red Death.
 Mysterious Guest- He was a man who is wearing a gruesome mask and was believe to be a victim
of a plague but turns out to be the Red Death itself at the end.
 Thousand Friends of Prince Prospero (Minor Characters)- not specified
Prince Prospero was described as happy and dauntless and sagacious man. He was directly characterized
as a fearless man who doesn’t care about death in the first part of the story. But as the story goes along,
his character change into violent as he was mad and confronted the mysterious guest with an unusual
clothing and mask. The character was also dynamic as the attitude of Prospero changed and the man who
is believe to be a victim of plague which portrays to be weak was the Red Death that kills them all.
Plot:
When the plague known as Red Death devastated the country, Prince Prospero was unbothered. He was
still happy. He secluded his abbeys in the palace and built gates of iron to lock the palace in order to fence
off the plague. Months later, Prospero decided to celebrate a masquerade ball in the palace with his
friends. There are seven rooms and each was decorated with colors and glass windows. The last room was
decorated with black with red windows. As the party was celebrated, most of the people avoided the
seventh room because of its ambiance. Suddenly, there was an expected guess who wears a gruesome
mask with an unusual outfit. Prospero heard murmurs about the mysterious figure and he started looking
for him. He ended up confronting him at the black room and Prospero died because the man turns out to
be the Red Death. When the people catches them at the seventh room, they realized that it was the Red
Death and all of them died.
Point of View: The story used third-person point of view.
Theme: Life and Death
Symbol: The seven color coded rooms in the abbeys symbolizes Life. The direction of its location which
is from east to west symbolizes a cycle (east is where the sun rises and west is where it sets). From the
story itself, Prospero walks through each room in order to confront the figure. He died confronting the
Red Death at the black room with the red windows. It only means that the seventh room symbolizes
death. And the clock inside the room which sounds loudly, represents the inevitable death of Prospero or
what we call “The time has come”. The “Red Death” was also an apocalyptic symbol as it was stated “He
had come like a thief in the night” which can be related in a famous bible verse.

Retrieved From:
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section10/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
October 17, 2020