Loss, Defeat, and Destruction
For a poem that, at the end of day, seems pretty triumphant or uplifting, there sure are plenty of references to things getting broken, lost, and destroyed. All these references reiterate the idea...
Negatives (No, Don't, Never)
If this poem is anything, it's a poem about what not to do if you want to be a man (or if you want to have a successful life). Seriously, at times the poem assumes a kind of "don't do this, and nev...
Strength and Endurance
If "If" is anything, it is a poem about endurance, about persevering, even in hard times. And we don't mean just literal endurance, as in the final stanza's discussion of distance running. There is...
Opposites and Extremes
"If" is a poem of extremes. If one thing is for certain, it's that whenever the speaker wants to make a point he goes from one extreme to the other. In stanza 2 there's "Triumph and Disaster," brea...