Darwin Meets Kipling: The Context of Modern Civilization in "The White Man’s Burden" Allan Ezekiel Were College

The White Man’s Burden Name Institution The White Man’s Burden Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) conveys several themes depending on different readers’ interpretations of the poem, and one’s point of view. One of the main themes conveyed in the Kipling’s poem is the influence of the Europeans culture on other people’s culture, as a result of imperialism. Kipling proposes that the whites have the duty to rule over and renovate other people’s cultural background. In fact, the phrase “To seek another's profit, And work another's gain” suggests that, the whites have an obligation to dictate the cultural development of the other nations until they become enlightened and become capable of sustaining their own economic and social backgrounds.

From the full title of the poem, “The White Man’s Burden: 1899, The United States and the Philippine Island.” Americans are urged to pick up the load of expansionism. The words, "the white man's burden" could be examined from a metaphoric point of view to mean the “the primitive world” that existed before the imperialism. The implication brought forward here is that, the European powers have the responsibility to take control of the national culture and economic traditions of their...