The Man in the Arena

I saw Invictus today with my family. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Invictus is a movie starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon set in South Africa in 1995. Apartheid in South Africa has ended but the country is still divided by the lingering feelings from it. Morgan Freeman plays the South African president, Nelson Mandela, who is looking for a way to inspire and unite his country. He campaigns to have the 1995 Rugby World Cup held in South Africa, and befriends the South African rugby team's captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) during the preparation for the tournament. Mandela helps Pienaar understand what it would mean for South Africa if they were to win the World Cup, and Pienaar in turn inspires his team and leads them to victory, uniting the country and lifting its hopes in the wake of apartheid.

This post was not intended to be a review of the movie, but I got carried away a little bit and did so anyways. I apologize for that. This post instead is about a poem and a speech. You'll read about the speech later. The poem is titled Invictus, and was written by an English poet named William Ernest Henley. Mandela is said to have kept a scrap of paper with the poem handwritten on it in his jail cell while he was exiled from South Africa and incarcerated for fighting apartheid. The movie takes its title from the poem, and in the movie Mandela writes the poem from memory and gives it to Pienaar to help inspire him and keep him focused. Here is the poem.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

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.

I like this poem. William Ernest Henley was a victim of tuberculosis and had to have his foot and lower leg amputated when he was a teenager to prevent the disease from spreading to the rest of his body. Despite his one-leggedness, Henley went on to live an active life, dying at the age of 53. He wrote the poem from a hospital bed. I think that the poem is a fitting one for a man to keep in his jail cell during his 27 year imprisonment, and for this man to give to his rugby captain when he becomes the president of his country. I would probably do the same.

Explanation of title: Until now my post might have lacked a point or a focus. You might find it here. The title of this post is also the title of the speech Theodore Roosevelt gave in 1910 in Paris. This seems unrelated to the movie Invictus and South Africa, but I assure you that it is. You see, while the movie depicts Nelson Mandela giving a copy of the poem Invictus to Francois Pienaar, that never actually happened. It is true that Mandela kept the poem in his prison cell, but when trying to provide inspiration for Pienaar, he gave him a copy of Teddy Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" speech. Despite the fact that the makers of the movie changed what was true to use the title Invictus, I am okay with them doing it, because it made for a good title and a good movie. Here is the most recognized part of the speech, some of you might know it.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.