Invictus By William Ernest Henley

Written in the form of a sonnet, William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus” describes the continuos battle against darkness and sin that every human being experiences in his or her life. “Invictus” is formatted in four stanzas with four lines each and every stanza serves a separate purpose then the stanzas before. Henley reveals one of the major themes of this poem through the words “My head is bloody, but unbowed” (8). This line at the end of stanza two displays that everybody will endure struggles at some point in their life, but they cannot let those struggles complete destroy themselves. Each stanza not only introduces realistic struggles and hardships that human beings face, but they also illustrate how humans can triumph over those