The document provides background information on English poet William Ernest Henley and analyzes his poem "Invictus". It discusses Henley contracting tuberculosis as a boy and writing the poem while hospitalized. The poem expresses Henley's defiant and unconquerable spirit in the face of hardship and adversity through four stanzas of iambic tetrameter with a consistent AABB rhyme scheme. Various literary theories are then used to analyze themes in the poem around one's soul, free will, fate, and finding the strength to overcome challenges from within.