Summary of If Poem by Rudyard Kipling

     “If” is a beautiful poem. It was written by Rudyard Kipling. It is highly motivational. Rudyard Kipling gives many suggestions. He talks about success. He gives ideas to succeed in life. The poem is in the form of an advice. This advice is given by a father to a son. The father gives suggestions to succeed in life. The first suggestion is composure. A person should be cool. We should not become angry easily. The second suggestion is self belief. We should be confident. We should say ‘I can’. The next suggestion is patience. If we are patient, we can succeed in life. Patience is very important to complete any project.

      The next suggestion is the truth. We should be honest. We should not say lies. Truth will help a person to succeed in life. The next suggestion is love. We should love everyone. We should be affectionate to everyone. The next suggestion is a dream. We should dream about our goal everyday. One day our dream will come true. Kipling says that we should treat both success and failure equally.

Structure of the Poem

      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.

     Thus, “If” is a beautiful poem. It talks about success. It is a poem of ultimate inspiration that tells us how to deal with different situations in life. Self belief, truth, patience and composure are important to succeed in life.