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Analysis: An Analysis Of If By Rudyard Kipling

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Analysis of “If” by Rudyard Kipling
You may have encountered it already in your literary travels, but if you haven 't, here 's a quick run-down: A line of iambic pentameter consists of ten syllables, divided into five groups. Now, if you take a peek at the other lines in the poem, you might notice a pattern. All of the even-numbered lines contain 10 syllables and are textbook iambic pentameter.
What about the odd-numbered lines? Let 's look at line 25, for example: “If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue”. Every stanza has the following rhyme scheme: ABABCDCD, where each letter represents that line 's end rhyme. It 's the poem 's way of making the nuts and bolts of poetry display the poem 's message. Okay, so why put a sore thumb in the poem then, Mr. Kipling? This poem is about the uncertainty of life; money is lost, people turn their backs on other people, stuff gets destroyed. If one thing is for certain, it is that the speaker of this poem loves the word "If." He loves it so much he uses it 13 times. Now the speaker doesn 't use this word a million times because he has some kind of problem or anything like that, in fact far from it. The speaker is not just a father, but a father who is putting his parent-as-teacher cap on for all to see. Lots of parents, when they 're in teacher mode, have this way of appearing very wise, and the speaker of "If" is no different. Now, even though the speaker definitely resembles your incredibly smart father, or your very wise
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