Summary of the poem 'Don't Quit'. English Class 8, SEBA.

Summary of the poem Don’t Quit

Don’t quit is an inspirational poem, which is written in a simple language.  It is a poem about never giving up in life, learning from failures and never losing hope. Let’s go deeper into the poem by understanding it line by line.

When things go wrong,

As they sometimes will,

Here the poet is telling his readers that in life sometimes things will definitely go wrong. Things will not always work out according to our plans.

When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

‘The road’ here refers to the path that we choose in our life and ‘all uphill’ refers to the challenges that we have to face in our path to success. In the above lines the poet wants to say that the path to our success that we walk with so laboriously will be full of challenges.  He also says that when in life our debts are higher than our savings; we cannot smile even when we feel like smiling, but instead we feel tired and worn out. Our financial crisis does not allow us to be happy.

When care is pressing you down a bit-

Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

The word ‘care’ in the above lines refers to the worries, frustration, uncertainty or anxieties that are brought about by the problems that we face in our life journey.  All these negative feelings can sometimes demotivate us and let us feel low in life. But in the next line there is a sudden shift in the tone of the poem from negativity to positivity, here the poet is telling us that is doesn’t matter how tired or demotivated we feel in life, we should never quit. Instead we must take rest for a while if needed and regain our energy. We should never quit because life is suppose to be full of challenges.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

Here ‘twists and turns’ refer to the uncertainties of life. Each one of us at some point in life learns that our life is really weird with all its uncertainties.  We never know what will happen to us next. So, we should always be ready to face the uncertainties of life with positivity.

And many a failure turns about

 When he might have won had he stuck it out.    

Here the poet is talking about the natural tendency of human beings to turn back after failures. Not every human being can accept or handle failures. And sometimes when we feel that we are just about to win in life, we get stuck.  As the poet already said that life is full of uncertainties.

Don’t give up though the pace seems slow-

You may succeed with another blow.

Failures make us feel like our success is taking too long, and we want to give up. Even if our walk towards success seems very slow, we shouldn’t stop. We should keep crawling. Who knows, we might succeed with just another try. Here the poet is asking his readers to keep trying even if we fail many times. A person who never gives up will definitely succeed one day.

Success is failure turn inside out-

The silver tints of the clouds of doubt,

Here the ‘silver tint’ refers to hope and ‘the clouds of doubts’ refer to many doubts that we come across in our road to success. In these lines the poet is telling that success and failures are the two sides of the same coin. Our failures are nothing but success in disguise, as failures gives us experiences that we can learn from. In our path to success we will definitely come across a lot of doubts. But our upcoming success should be the hope to overcome these doubts. No matter what big are our doubts the hope of success should keep us moving forward.

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far;

Success doesn’t come with any timeline. We cannot expect to achieve success on a given time frame. We can be very close to our success and we might not have any hint about it. Sometimes it may be very near to us, when we feel like we still have a long way to go to be successful.

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit

It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

So, we should never give up and continue fighting, mostly when we face bigger challenges. It’s most important to continue the fight, when we feel like giving up and we cannot find any ray of hope.  That is when God is testing us, whether we deserve success or not. 

Through this poem the poet wants to convey a message to his readers that giving up shouldn’t be an option in their life. A person who keeps on fighting the battle of life with consistency will definitely be rewarded with success one day.