Preview

Donedra Invictus

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
436 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Donedra Invictus
Donedra Williams
April 30, 2014
P.1
Final Draft
Literary Analysis of “Invictus”
By (William Ernest Henley)

I believe that the theme of the poem “Invictus” is taking responsibility for your own destiny. No matter the challenges and obstacles we face in life we need to overcome them and become the master of our fate. Don’t let anything bring you down even though it looks bad. Keep pushing until your last breath, don’t ever give up.
In the first stanza, the speaker prays in the dark to “whatever gods”, for the strength he has to keep pushing forward and not letting any illness defeat him. This stanza includes a metaphor when it expresses his hardships and the night which I think represents the darkness of despair. Second, he does not pray for strength, but he gives thanks for the strength he already has. In the second stanza, he describes the condition he is in. He does not talk about God’s will or fate but he talks about his burdens. He expresses imagery when he says “under the bludgeoning of chance, my head is bloody and unbowed”. He’s giving description of how he is and how he is feeling, but through it all he asserts that he has overcome these burdens bravely and without complaint.
The third stanza is about death and what a trifle it seems to the speaker. The approaching years must stand and be ready to find the person not afraid and ready to overcome the hardships the future will provide. The speaker cannot prevent what is going to happen to him. The past has prepared the speaker for the future, nothing bothers him anymore.
The fourth stanza interprets how a person is in control of his or her life. Whatever life throws at them they are the “captain of their soul” meaning they can manage their own life. With the authority they have over their life, they will be able to choose their own road. Which means they are the master of their fate and the captain of your soul.
This poem is a very inspirational poem. Even through the trials and tribulations the speaker

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    After I read the poem, I think why do I follow people’s mind to live. It's always about owning our own lives, being responsible for who we are through the choices we make.…

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    On Frost at Midnight

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the second stanza, he is reminiscing about his childhood and how he felt imprisoned in school (gazed upon the bars). He speaks of a fluttering stranger (line 26), which seems to indicate that not that person is fluttering, but his eyelids are. His eyes are unclosed, because he is daydreaming, but soon he actually falls asleep and thinks about his teacher, who he detests. He describes the anticipation of being able to go outside again only by hearing the bells of the old church-tower, since he is only looking out the window and waiting for the doors to open for anybody to pick him up and take him outside.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    its theme is to always stay hopeful, no matter how bad or ‘dark’ events may get. In Stanza 3, it is…

    • 581 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fahrenheit 451 Themes

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the poem he continually discusses that death is rage, a curse, etc. These inevitable fears are first introduced in the first stanza when he states, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” This first stanza opens with saying one should not give into death, and when it comes, it should come with a full life. These ideas are featured once again in the last stanza. The author reveals the true purpose about the poem in this stanza, stating, “And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In this stanza he is saying that he believes his father should fight, and that he does not care what his father has to do to fight. Giving up the fight is like being a lawn mower in a field of gardeners, in the end those who fight have a greater…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this passage, the author delivers the message that even though you went through hard times in life and being lonely when someone is gone you can still fight for your dreams/goals in life for a purpose that might change your…

    • 810 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The third stanza is describing the snowstorm beginning; "Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night"…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The true beauty of this poem for me, and what makes it so enigmatic, is the mutual recognition in a person, between two moments past and future, of one's frame of mind at the other moment. We are so long in time, that such connections are very, very rare, and to have a moment of empathy with one's future or past self is both to gain a momentary insight into the nature of life and aging, and to momentarily gain a new internal context to how we perceive the aging of others, and what it really means to…

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Night” focuses on how evil is born when darkness rises. In the first stanza the speaker reveals that the day is ending and night is beginning. The moon and the sun are personified when the speaker says “the sun descending in the west” and “sits and smiles on the night.” Throughout the beginning of the poem the speaker’s tone is comforting. For example, he mentions “warm, sleep, and bed”; then towards the end of the poem the tone changes drastically. William Blake is famous for mentioning a guardian angel in his poems, and he does so in the second stanza.…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Upon a "certain hour", or sleep, the speaker beckons his soul to fly free, escape the day, and ponder its own themes. The speaker's soul does not necessarily appreciate the day's happenings and thoughts, so it drifts in dreaming to a place where it can think about "night, sleep, death, and the stars." The daytime mind of the speaker, most likely representing a restricted or bound form, thinks about things it is perhaps not naturally inclined to do. This poem is like a snap-shot of the human soul between consciousness and…

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    On the sixth stanza ‘let it spread through’ expresses all his emotions are combined together. It emphasises his emotions are in one bubble and makes us feel he has a sense of control. ‘A mind like compost’ he implies an imagery of nature in and life in one concept. The word ‘compost’ may signify tranquillity and how in the past indicating his serenity was disturbed by iniquity. For instance his new life is important to him ‘wait water down’ indicating he is cleansing everything out. This relates to him making a fresh start. ‘Sift down even’, ‘from the dark to bottom these two stanza’s express him making a fresh start and getting rid of the…

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mckay And Antigone

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The narrator proposes “Beyond this place of wrath and tears, looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds, and shall find me unafraid.” This means that even though he is hurting, he will not be afraid to die. Although he has a bunch of tears, he will fight through the pain. He is not afraid to go through the consequence of being afraid and sick. In lines 6 through 16, it shows that he is the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. This means he controls his every movement no matter how big or small the problems are. He is not afraid of dying because he knows eventually he will…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “There is one story and one story only / That will prove worth your telling”. The first two lines deal with human life. You have only one life to live and what you do with the time you are given is completely up to you. It also deals with the fact that everyone wants to be remembered so you need to make sure that your life is one worth talking about. “Such common stories as they stray into.” Everyone starts the same, we are all born as a baby and as we grow up we go down different roads living different lives in hopes that when we are gone that we will be remembered for something we did. “Or the Zodiac and how slow it turns” Time continues on at a slow and steady pace that we can either take advantage of it or we can let it be as “strange beasts that beset you”. “So each new victim treads unfalteringly/ The never altered circuit of his fate / Bringing twelve peers as witness/ Both to his starry rise and starry fall.” These lines take on a sense that we are all going to be judged at the end of our lives. Saying how each of us live our lives without knowing the future, but we are in a supposed predetermined fate that has already decided whether we will “rise” as in go to heaven, or “fall” to go to hell. “Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,” the undying snake is an allusion to Satan who deceived Eve into committing the sin against God thus creating the first forms of chaos in the world. “Battles three days and nights,” alludes to the three days after Jesus was crucified when the…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Growing up in a Baptist church, this hymn was a staple in the sermons preached on Sundays. This poem is widely known because in ails of time we’ve either heard it from the pulpit or from our grandmothers giving thanks to her Almighty God for saving her. Although this poem is short it is to the point. As stated in our text “hymns relate to universal human experience and the sweeping range of emotions they produce” and is a “poetic expressions of praise, hymns connect (and lift) these feelings—joyful, fearful, sad, grateful—to a divine realm as evidence of faith and with expectation of hope.” (Clugston, 2010). The song is universal and the lyrics are well known throughout the world.…

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    just to understand the words, they would see that the play is actually the lives…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Invictus

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This poem is about being invictus, a Latin word for unconquerable. Henley writes about the hardships he faced and how it has not made him weaker. In the first stanza, he writes, “Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods maybe for my unconquerable soul.” This stanza shows that even through the night, a metaphor for hardships, Henley is bothered. In terms of leadership, the larger theme of this poem is that even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise, because in the poem Henley writes that even through everything, he is left untouched; his soul is still unconquerable, his his head is still unbowed,…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays