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“Invictus” consists of four rhyming quatrains that, broadly speaking, trace the speaker’s struggle to resist adverse conditions and develop a sense of defiant self-determination. Each of the first three stanzas traces the arc of this struggle in its own way. The opening stanza begins with the speaker addressing the reader from “out of the night that covers me” (line 1). The speaker still appears to be within this dark “night” that is “black as the pit from pole to pole” (line 2). Whatever this place is, it has evidently challenged the speaker’s belief in a higher power—hence their skeptical reference to “whatever gods may be” (line 3). Even so, they do express a firm belief that they possess a soul and that this soul is “unconquerable” (line 4). The second and third stanzas both have a similar structure. That is, they each begin with a description of adverse circumstances, then conclude with by affirming their capacity for resistance. In stanza 2, for instance, after describing the violent effects of “circumstance” and “chance” (lines 5 and 7), the speaker asserts: “My head is bloody, but unbowed” (line 8). Likewise, in stanza 3, the speaker begins with a pained recognition of mortality, but then concludes by insisting that they remain undaunted and “unafraid” (line 12).

With the fourth and final quatrain, the speaker finally breaks with the structure developed in the first three stanzas (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.

Here, instead of describing the conditions constraining them, the speaker begins by rejecting all forms of constraint. The reference to a “strait . . . gate” alludes to a biblical passage where Jesus cautions his disciples that the path to salvation is narrow. But the speaker refuses to believe in such a narrow path of righteousness. They also refuse to be daunted by the list of “punishments” that might be found on “the scroll” of final judgment. The speaker will no longer be hampered by the weight of sin and self-doubt. Instead, they spend the final lines asserting that they are fully capable of determining their own future. Although the speaker may not have completely left behind the dark “night” where the poem begins, their nod to the future suggests at the very least that they’re beginning to see the light.

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