A photograph of two large drama masks, one happy, one sad.

Source: Mardi Gras World, Eddie Codel, Flickr

The capitalized words emphasize the most powerful parts of the poem. If a person can stay calm and focused even in the face of life’s extremes, “Triumph and Disaster,” he can have the whole “Earth” and will have become a “Man.” The fact that Kipling ends the poem with the lowercase words “my son” shows that the poem offers advice for how a young person can become a successful adult. The shift from “son” to “Man” suggests the process of growing up.

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