Need Help with this Question or something similar to this? We got you! Just fill out the order form (follow the link below), and your paper will be assigned to an expert to help you ASAP.
Read Kipling’s poem below carefully. Is this simply bald-faced racism cloaked as obligation? Think about why “white men” are undertaking this “burden”.
How and why do schemes such as those put forward by Lubbock and Morgan echo these same sentiments? How is the manifest destiny an example of the “white man’s burden”? To what extent do you see these attitudes in society today?
Take up the White man’s burden —
Send forth the best ye breed —
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times mad plain.
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
The savage wars of peace —
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper —
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!
Take up the White man’s burden —
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Ye dare not stoop to less —
Nor call too loud on freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Have done with childish days —
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Rudyard Kipling
now read this quote from Mark Twain’s sarcastic essay, To a Person Sitting in Darkness:
Shall we?That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our Civilization tools together and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sell out the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds?
Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully worked—but not enough, in my judgment, to make any considerable risk advisable.The People that Sit in Darkness are getting to be too scarce—too scarce and too shy.And such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality, and not dark enough for the game.The most of those People that Sit in Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or profitable for us.We have been injudicious. The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy.There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played.
But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it—they have noticed it and have begun to show alarm.They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization. More—they have begun to examine them.This is not well.The Blessings of Civilization are all right, and a good commercial property; there could not be a better, in a dim light. In the right kind of a light and at a proper distance, with the goods a little out of focus, they furnish this desirable exhibit to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness: Love Justice Gentleness Christianity Protection to the Weak Temperance Law and Order Liberty Equality Honorable Dealing Mercy Education —and so on.
There. Is it good? Sir, it is pie. It will bring into camp any idiot that sits in darkness anywhere. But not if we adulterate it. It is proper to be emphatic upon that point.This brand is strictly for Export—apparently. Apparently. Privately and confidentially, it is nothing of the kind. Privately and Associations/Dissociations confidentially, it is merely an outside cover, gay and pretty and attractive, displaying the special patterns of our Civilization which we reserve for Home Consumption, while inside the bale is the Actual Thing that the Customer Sitting in Darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty.That Actual Thing is indeed Civilization, but it is only for Export. I
what does Twain feel about the colonial exercise? What aspects of it does he see that Kipling chooses to overlook?
