Republic of the Philippines

UNIVERSITY OF RIZAL SYSTEM

Province of Rizal

College of Science
Morong Campus

Name : Mary Jane V. Gapangada

Degree Program : BS in Human Services
Block Section : B2
Course : Readings on World’s Literary Masterpieces
Professor : Ken Russel Z. Gutierrez
Semester : Second
School Year : 2021-2022

Edgar Albert Guest's a British-born American poet and became known as the people poet.
Don't Quit, was publish in 1921, yet the ideas remain valuable today. It will take a lot of endurance,
resilience, desire and strength to keep going especially when things are not going well for us to
succeed. The poem is telling its viewer to always have a positive outlook in life, never quit and
just rest if we must, but, is resting and not giving up can always lead us to success?

The poem Don't Quit has a really motivating and encouraging tone to it. Life is like a roller
coaster, with all its twists and turns, and it's like escaping from a dark tunnel where you can't
foresee what's coming next. This poem discusses how life might knock you down, but you must
get back up and try again to succeed. We are supposed to stumble and make mistake and this
poem is an accurate representation for that.

My most favorite line from the poem is " success is failure turned inside out", which means
for me that every failure holds lesson that must be learned in order to succeed in future attempt
or ventures. This one, in my opinion, best describes real life. Majority of the lines of the poem is
telling the same thing: don't give up and keep going, because life is naturally hard so we must
endure it to succeed. It feels for me, that resting is our only choice every time life gets hard. I am
not trying to say that the idea or message of the poem is incorrect; rather, I'm implying that in
reality there are instances that giving up is the best option we have. And since most people believe
that giving up should not be an option for the belief that it's a sign of weakness and will only lead
us to nothing but failure.

Every line from the poem offers hope to its viewers. Hope that after the storm there is
always a rainbow. However, in reality there are those who will survive the storm and those who
will fall. For some people, hope declined and tossed them over because the strong desire to wish
things to be different was frustrating to them. Positivity is negative. Some of you may have heard
of the term toxic positivity, which is positive vibe only attitude to life, that I don't presume.
Remember that never give up and hope is not always the key to success; sometimes acceptance
and moving forward is our only path to achieve success.

Despite this or anyone’s personal beliefs, I think the way we use hope in our life is important.

Reference:

1 Don't Quit Poem A Famous Poem by Edgar A. Guest (stresslesscountry.com) (Guest, 1921)