Invictus: Key Poetic Devices

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, often made without explicit identification. A key allusion appears in the final stanza of “Invictus,” where the speaker clinches their claim to self-determination (lines 13–16):

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

The phrase “how strait the gate” alludes to a well-known biblical passage from Matthew 7:14, which in the King James Version reads as follows: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Jesus is delivering his famous Sermon on the Mount, explaining to his disciples that the path to salvation and eternal life is difficult. The essential point is that it’s easy to stray from the righteous path and hence fail to pass through the “strait”—that is, narrow—gate to heaven. By contrast, the speaker of Henley’s poem seems to reject Christ’s warning, and with it the traditional beliefs of Christianity. Instead of following a prescribed path leading to their spiritual salvation through God, the speaker insists that they are “the captain of [their] soul.”

Assonance and Consonance

Assonance and consonance are sibling concepts, in that they both refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Henley uses both techniques throughout “Invictus” in ways that suggestively reflect his themes. Consider, for instance, how he uses many long A, E, and O sounds to suggest the ever-looming presence of death (lines 9–12):

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.

Whereas this stanza is particularly heavy on vowels, note how the poem’s second stanza is loaded with heavy consonants, especially hard Cs and Bs, which are typically combined with L and R sounds (lines 5–8):

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

The hard consonants and dense consonant clusters sonically reproduce the violence of the stanza’s imagery. These and other example demonstrate how Henley uses both assonance and consonance to vivid effect throughout the poem.

Personification

Personification refers to instances where a poet invests an inanimate object or abstract concept with human-like attributes or feelings. Henley uses personification to subtle effect in the poem’s second stanza, where the speaker describes how they have remained steadfast in adverse conditions. The speaker begins the stanza be declaring, “In the fell clutch of circumstance, / I have not winced nor cried aloud” (lines 5–6). Here, the speaker describes the abstract concept of circumstance as an abusive human-like figure who has grasped them in their “fell clutch.” A similar example of personification occurs in the next two lines: “Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed” (lines 7–8). Just as circumstance took on the aura of an abusive human-like figure, so too does chance, which has metaphorically beaten the speaker bloody. Two things are worth noting about these quasi-human figures of circumstance and chance. First, though they have failed to quash the speaker’s spirit, they have had a real and significant effect on the speaker’s life. Second, though abstract, these figures are still somehow more real than the Christian God and “whatever [other] gods may be” (line 3). But regardless of how real they might be, the speaker rejects them all.

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