White Man's Burden: Rudyard Kipling
Summary
The poem is subtitled "The United States and the Philippine Islands". The speaker says to take up the White Man's burden, which is to send the best men abroad and your sons into exile to serve your captives. These "newly-caught" people are wild, angry, and both devilish and childish. He repeats that you must take up this burden to be patient, temper your terror and holds back your pride, to use simple and frank words, and to gain profit from others.
He repeats to take up the burden, which includes "the savage wars of peace". You are to fill mouths with food and end famine and get rid of sickness and disease. However, you must be careful to avoid, as your goal draws near, falling into sloth and folly and watching your hopes dissolve. He repeats to take up the burden – not the work of Kings but of common men, toiling like serfs. You will mark ports and roads with both your living and you’re dead.
He repeats to take up the White Man's burden, which will include being blamed by those you protect and being hated by those you guard. The hosts will call out, asking why you brought them out of bondage toward the light. He repeats to take up the White Man's burden and never attempts to do less. He warns you not to use Freedom as a cloak for weariness because everything you do or say will be watched and weighed by the "silent, sullen peoples" you are endeavouring to help.
He concludes by repeating to take up the White Man's burden and leave your childish days behind you. You must ignore light, unwarranted praise and seek the manhood that comes from many "thankless years" and "dear-bought wisdom".
Analysis
“The White Man’s Burden,” published in 1899 in McClure’s magazine, is one of Kipling’s most infamous poems. It has been lauded and reviled in equal measure and has come to stand as the major articulation of the Occident’s rapacious and all-encompassing imperialist ambitions in the Orient. The poem was initially composed for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee but Kipling decided to submit “Recessional” instead. Kipling, observing the events across the Atlantic in the Spanish-American War, sent this to the then-governor of New York Theodore Roosevelt as a warning regarding the dangers of obtaining and sustaining an empire. Roosevelt would then forward the poem to his friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.”
The poem is seven stanzas long with a traditional rhyme scheme. It exhorts the reader to take up the white man’s burden by sending the best of their country to dark, uncivilized places on the earth. There they should try to end famine and disease and serve their new captives - the native peoples. The poem smacks of cultural imperialism, with the superior English going into a country of “sullen” brutes and imposing their civilizing behaviours and institutions. There is, of course, a mentality of the Social Gospel idea of philanthropy, which said that the rich and powerful had an obligation to assist the impoverished and the sick. While not necessarily a bad idea, it was still underlain with assumptions about racial superiority and helped to furthermore nefarious ways of establishing hegemony.
Racism is quite manifest. The native, “captive peoples” are “sullen peoples, / Half-devil and half-child”. They are being brought toward the light, but act indignant and ungrateful toward those who want to better them. Of course, this attitude is understandable to us today – why would colonial subjects avidly embrace the violent, debasing imperialist impulses of other nations? – but Kipling seems to marvel that these people would not jump up in thanks to their "civilizing" conquerors.
The racism and acclaim for imperialism cannot be ignored, but Kipling did not intend the poem to be viewed as unqualified support of the imperialist endeavour; in fact, a more careful reading will reveal that Kipling was offering warnings to those who sought to undertake such actions. He warns against allowing sloth and folly to take over; laziness and debauched behaviour can quickly derail noble goals. He also cautions patience, and tries to make it clear that this work is difficult and burdensome – it is the “toil of serf and sweeper,” not the “tawdry rule of kings”. He tells them they will encounter resistance and hostility but must push through. Some of the most stirring lines are: “Take up the White Man's burden-- / Have done with childish days-- / The lightly proffered laurel, / The easy, ungrudged praise”. Those who worked in the colonies must grow up quickly and understand that they will work hard and perhaps not earn the frequent and unfettered praise they might have expected.
Despite its more nuanced message, the phrase “the white man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism. Criticism of the poem has endured. Parodies were written early; “The Brown Man’s Burden” by Henry Lambuchere and H.T. Johnson’s “The Black Man’s Burden” are two such examples, both written in 1899. The German-American political theorist/philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote in her famous discussion of imperialism in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) that “the fact that the ‘White Man’s burden is either hypocrisy or racism has not prevented a few of the best Englishmen from shouldering the burden in earnest and making themselves the tragic and quixotic fools of imperialism.”
Summary
‘The Black Man’s Burden’ by African-American clergyman H. T. Johnson describes how the whites piled on the burden of shame, guilt, and subjugation on the blacks. Johnson anticipates how God will punish the colonizers.
This poem elaborates on what the colonizers did to the natives of Hawaii and Cuba in the first stanza. According to the speaker, they only fought with their clubs and arrows. Whereas the fearless armies menaced the feeble folks. One by one, they ended the red man’s problem with bullets. However, the speaker advises them to defend their honour by not behaving barbarously. In the following stanzas, Johnson alludes to the discriminatory Jim-crow laws and how the colonizers piled the burden of shame on the African-Americans. Whatsoever, God’s wrath is going to end this long cycle of shame and guilt. On this note, Johnson ends his poem.
Meaning
The title ‘The Black Man’s Burden’ alludes to the infamous jingoistic poem of Kipling. It is a direct response to his poem. So, Johnson just replaced the word “White” with “Black” to create an ironic effect. The title of this piece refers to the burden of shame and guilt that the colonizers piled upon the black, brown, and red men. They kept on piling their ideology on them by defusing the inner potential of colonized. In this piece, Johnson writes in a humorous, satiric, and ironic tone. He adopted this tone to make his point clear to the colonizers and Kipling. That if they are so idealistic about their divine duty, they have to behave themselves first. Otherwise, the divine power will take cognizance and punish them severely.
Literary Devices
Johnson’s ‘The Black Man’s Burden’ includes several literary devices which include but are not limited to the following figures of speech:
Metaphor: In the very first line the “Black Man’s Burden” is a metaphor for guilt and shame. Johnson uses personal metaphors in “long bleeding Cuba” and “dark Hawaii’s shore”.
Alliteration: “Black Man’s Burden”, “ye your”, “feeble folks”, “bullets, blood”, etc.
Allusion: This poem contains allusions to the American geopolitical expansion to Hawaii and Cuba, Jim-crow laws, suppressing the indigenous Red Indians, and Philippine-American War.
Irony: “Why heed long bleeding Cuba,” “You’ve sealed the Red Man’s problem,” etc.
Personification: “Though winked at by the nation,” and “Your battleships and armies/ May weaker ones appal.”
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