The White Man's Burden

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The White Man’s Burden “The White Man’s Burden” is a poem written by English poet Rudyard Kipling in 1988. It is a response to the American take over of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, though it was originally written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The poem, consisting of seven stanzas, is an epic poem - meaning that it is trying to tell us a story, in this case about the burden of the white man. It is read in a slow rhythm, which evokes a sombre meaning or mood, and the poet used a quatrain rhyme scheme (a-b-a-b) which gives it a nice flow. Looking closer at stanza one, you can see that there is a deeper meaning to words which are rhyming, eg. breed – need, meaning that the men which have been send forth are needed and wild – child, meaning the wild prisoners are seen upon as children. There is used a lot of imagery in the language, creating a motion picture in our heads while reading it, here is an example of a metaphoric imagery ”The ports ye shall not enter, the roads ye shall not tread” (stanza 4, l. 5 and 6) The poem is filled with many strange words, which make the whole context of the poem hard to understand, especially if you are a non-native speaker. Some examples of those words could be, abide, famine, bondage etc. Another rather conspicuous line is the repetition of the sentence “Take up the White Man’s burden-”, which every stanza start with. The intention is of course to promote the theme and reminding us, what the poem is trying to tell us. The first four stanzas are describing the burden and the quest that the White Men have been assigned to do. It is about sending forth the best soldiers, so that they can serve the “fluttered folk and wild”, because according to the White Men, they are needed. They have to help the prisoners by feeding them and taking care of them, if they turn ill. They have to establish a well
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