The Representation of Colonized People in Rudyard Kipling’s Poem “the White Man’s Burden�?: an Unrealistic Representation Essay Example
1- Introduction
In the modern world history, Western countries have mastered a vast part of the world. And this kind of control, based on domination and subordination, aroused mainly from colonialism and imperialism like the power of the British Empire over many colonized countries in the world. Thus, this imperial power had intensively engaged writers’ attention. Among those major writers is Rudyard Kipling. He is a British novelist and poet who was born in British India in 1865 and died in 1963. Though he lived over thirteen years there, the reader finds that his works espouse the imperial ideology and he came to be recognized as a "prophet of the British imperialism"(Orwell 116). And this is well manifested in his poem "The White Man's Burden" published in 1899. It ideologically justifies the process of colonization and empire naming it a "burden". It urges the colonial power to take up the burden of colonialism representing the West as the superior whose responsibility is to civilize the backward colonized nations. Thus, in analyzing the issue of representation of colonized people in the poem from Edward Said’s perspective, one can find out that it is just a misrepresentation. And through Kipling’s accusation of camouflaging the atrocity of the imperial vision by this misrepresentation, it is clear that the real reason behind this unrealistic image is empowering the cultural hegemony of the colonizer.
1- The analysis
2.1- Defining Edward Said’s notion of representation.
People can be able to understand the complex world in which we live through language and representation. The term representation has a range of interpretations. According to the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, representation, etymologically, can be seen as constructing and representing the object in a new form of picture rather than by depicting it as it is in its reality (172). And no one of these representations is objective because it’s
In the modern world history, Western countries have mastered a vast part of the world. And this kind of control, based on domination and subordination, aroused mainly from colonialism and imperialism like the power of the British Empire over many colonized countries in the world. Thus, this imperial power had intensively engaged writers’ attention. Among those major writers is Rudyard Kipling. He is a British novelist and poet who was born in British India in 1865 and died in 1963. Though he lived over thirteen years there, the reader finds that his works espouse the imperial ideology and he came to be recognized as a "prophet of the British imperialism"(Orwell 116). And this is well manifested in his poem "The White Man's Burden" published in 1899. It ideologically justifies the process of colonization and empire naming it a "burden". It urges the colonial power to take up the burden of colonialism representing the West as the superior whose responsibility is to civilize the backward colonized nations. Thus, in analyzing the issue of representation of colonized people in the poem from Edward Said’s perspective, one can find out that it is just a misrepresentation. And through Kipling’s accusation of camouflaging the atrocity of the imperial vision by this misrepresentation, it is clear that the real reason behind this unrealistic image is empowering the cultural hegemony of the colonizer.
1- The analysis
2.1- Defining Edward Said’s notion of representation.
People can be able to understand the complex world in which we live through language and representation. The term representation has a range of interpretations. According to the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, representation, etymologically, can be seen as constructing and representing the object in a new form of picture rather than by depicting it as it is in its reality (172). And no one of these representations is objective because it’s