Invictus

William Ernest Henley the author of the poem "Invictus" he suffered from a disease leg (tuberculosis of the bone). This poem served as a way to keep his soul strong and to continue the fight to dominate his debilitating medical problem. Eventually his leg was amputated and it was his memory of this event that served as the inspiration for his poem.

This is my favorite poem because it is the reflection of the author's feelings about illness as in the first stanza he expresses how unwell he feels and compares his health to the darkness of night and a black pit. Henley refers to his misfortune or in other words his "bad times" as simply something that happens and he has remained strong and confident by not showing his pain by crying out aloud. He even refers to the afterlife. Once he has passed away he will be beyond the anger and tears, he relates to his life after death as a a gloomy, dark or a faint place between the living and the dead and states that even though he faces the "Horror of the shade", he is unafraid despite the danger or threat of his former years of life . According to the author's beliefs he concludes that no matter how a person lives his life, good or bad, a man is his own God and can manage his own destiny without any need of instruction from creator.

From this poem I learned that we are the creator of our destiny, even though we meet our downfalls, we still control the outcome by how we react or respond to that downfall..."Life is simple, we just make it complicated".

Evanie E. Eporac
BEEd II-B