If

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=‍ **if by Rudyard Kipling** =

**If you can keep your head when all about you**

‍ ‍And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son
=Rudyard Kipling=

**if by Rudyard Kipling**
 * Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in India in 1865. The Indian city of Bombay is now called Mumbai. He was born near the end of 1865, on the 30th of December. He lived in India for the first six years of his life. Then his parents sent him to England. He didn’t like England because it was cold and dark. Rudyard dreamed of going back to India. **
 * Rudyard finished his school and travelled back to India when he was 17 years old. He found a job as a reporter working for English language newspapers in India. Rudyard wrote newspaper reports about things which happened in India but he wanted to write stories and poems. He finished his first book of poems, Departmental Ditties, in 1886 when he was 21 years old. **
 * He started to write short stories for the newspaper and soon his stories were very popular. Lots of people liked to read his stories and Rudyard Kipling became famous in India. A lot of his stories were about the lives of soldiers and their families in India. **
 * Rudyard Kipling also liked to write stories for children. In 1894, he wrote The Jungle Book. The Jungle Book is a story about a boy called Mowgli. Mowgli lives in the jungle. He has no mother or father. His family are the animals in the jungle. Mowgli learns the rules of life in the jungle from and old bear called Baloo, and Bagheera, a black panther. Slowly Mowgli learns the language and the habits of the animals in the jungle. Mowgli’s life is very happy but he is always frightened that Shere Khan, the tiger will jump on him at eat him. **
 * There are two films of The Jungle Book. There was an old black and white film in 1942 with a young Indian actor called Sabu acting the part of Mowgli. Then in 1967 Walt Disney made an animated cartoon film of The Jungle Book with wonderful songs. People loved this film so Walt Disney made another film of the stories of Mowgli called Jungle Book 2. **
 * Rudyard Kipling wrote many more stories for children such as How the leopard got his spots and How the camel got his hump. He called these Just So Stories and they are popular with children all over the world. **
 * Rudyard Kipling also wrote books for adults. A lot of his books are adventure stories. He also wrote exciting ghost stories such as, The Room in the Tower and Other Stories. **
 * Rudyard Kipling also helped Baden Powell, the man who started the Boy Scouts. Baden Powell wanted to start an organisation for younger boys like the Boy Scouts. Baden Powell liked the story called Mowgli’s Brothers from The Jungle Book. When Mowgli was a young boy he lived in the jungle with a pack of wolves. Mowgli’s brothers were wolf cubs. Baden Powell started an organisation called the wolf cubs. Each group is called a ‘pack’ and they meet in a ‘den’. The leader of each pack is called ‘Akela’, like the leader of the pack **
 * PHOTOCOPIABLE www.penguinreaders.com © 2008 Pearson Education Limited **

**If you can keep your head when all about you**

= = = If Summary =

**//Stanza 1//**

The first stanza of “If” illustrates the practice of self-confidence and expresses that, in being confident, the reader must have the courage to face unpopularity and disagreement. This stanza also, however, advises against a self-confidence that does not allow for the consideration of opposing ideas. In exhorting the reader to both ignore doubt and make allowance for doubt (lines 3 and 4), Kipling creates a paradox (the combination of mutually exclusive ideas that, while seemingly contradictory, serve to make a point in their contradiction) that is characteristic of the tone of the entire poem.

Line 5 advises patience, line 6 advises honesty, and line 7 advises fortitude of character. These three lines, along with the first four lines of the poem, share a common thread: they provide instruction in the maintenance of righteous behavior in the face of unrighteousness. However, in line 8, Kipling is quick to qualify his advice, telling the reader “yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.” That is, in behaving righteously, a person must avoid self-righteousness.

The meter of the first stanza moves along at a set and predictable pace. If it were to be read aloud, the smooth pace of the regular meter would reflect a quietness of tone—a tone that reflects the humility Kipling seems to be advocating in the last two lines of stanza 1.

**//Stanza 2//**

The second stanza employs variations in the meter. C. E. Carrington, in an essay on the poem for the //Kipling Journal//, writes of line 12 in particular: “The reader finds his voice rising with a sort of indignation to a climax at the words //those two imposters//. (Read this line as an iambic pentameter and you kill it dead.)” As Carrington notes, the consecutive stressed syllables here are jarring in their phrasing, serving to add heated... » [|Complete If Summary]