For Monday, read the following poems (on the handout):
* “The Widow at Windsor
* “The White Man’s Burden”
* “If”
* “I keep six honest
serving-men”
If you weren’t here on
Friday, you can find many of these poems here: http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/kipling_ind.html
Answer TWO of the
following:
Q1: The poem “I keep six
honest serving-men” is an example of his poetry for children, as it originally followed
the story “The Elephant’s Child,” in his book Just So Stories, tales
about how things came to be. What lesson do you think this poem is trying to
teach children, particularly with its “serving-men”? Whom do these men serve
and why? Who could the “person small” be who seems to ask so many questions?
Q2: At the end of “If,”
the narrator proclaims that if the addressee—his actual son?—can do all the
laundry list of things in the poem, “you’ll be a Man, my son!” What kind of
advice is being offered in the poem? Is it practical, no-nonsense advice for a
Victorian gentleman? Or is it something less valuable? Is this good advice for
a young man even today?
Q3: The poem, “The White
Man’s Burden” has become a familiar phrase in history books, and the poem
itself has been attacked as racist propaganda for lines such as “Sloth and
heathen Folly” and “The silent, sullen peoples.” Who do you imagine is speaking
this poem? Is this poet—or a character? A reliable or unreliable narrator? Are
we supposed to applaud these sentiments or find them ironic? What clues tell us
how to read/interpret this poem?
Q4: “The Widow at Windsor British empire .
How does he view his Queen and his country? Is he patriotic—or pessimistic
about his role in “the rank and file”?
Elyse Marquardt
ReplyDeleteQ3) The writer of this poem seems to be a reliable narrator who has an omniscient view of the goings-on. I believe we are meant to read this poem and understand that it is a sad, ironic interpretation of the attitudes with which the white man views the rest of the world: as a prize for him to take into his possession and to rule over with an iron thumb. The fact that the narrator tells the white man to "Go make [roads] with your living, and mark them with your dead" is a pretty good clue that he is angrily preaching at the "White Man" about the way that man treats the nations viewed as less important and less powerful than himself.
Q4) "The Widow at Widsor" seems to be a pessimistic view of a soldier who views his queen as overly powerful and his country as abused by her rule. From a poor soldier's point of view, it would seem that the queen has no regard for the fortune of those who protect her and her demesne. The soldier accepts his fate, but with a sad face, and he seems to be making a conscious decision to respect the queen who has no thought for him.
Elyse Marquardt
1.) The small person who asks so many questions is a child. They do not know how to use their Hows, Whose, Whens, etc. without overusing them, and Kipling is making the comparison between man and child over their ability to refrain from over-asking. However, this isn't a praise for this sort of behavior, because the child is still full of curiosity and wonder so the child's questions still need to "travel overseas" in order to retrieve answers, where an adult has already learned enough and has no need to continue asking. Basically, the childlike wonder of the world has faded.
ReplyDelete2.) The advice in the poem sounds like good advice, but it actually seems to come from a jaded place. It is telling the individual receiving the message (may not be the son, may be someone who is in the army or really any individual) that if they are essentially perfect then no one can touch them with words or gossip or falsehoods. However, the poem has a bit of an anxious note to it, because hardly any human being is capable of pulling off all of the ideals it holds without losing composure. It's saying that, no matter what you do, you'll never be perfect to everyone alive and the same goes for every other person - no one can achieve societies standard of perfection.
Steven Shelley
ReplyDeleteQ1: I think this whole poem is about a child who is at that obnoxious age when all they can ask is why? In the first two stanza the speaker is talking about him or herself. When in the third it is talking about his or her daughter, and that she can’t control all the questions she asks. These men serve the wonder and the thoughts that the speaker and his or her daughter.
Q2: This whole poem sounds just like a sermon. The advice being offered is how to be a real man. This is all practical advice on how the be the best man you can be. A lot of this sounds like ways to conduct business. I think that is good advice for men today and a lot of boys growing up really need to hear something like this.
q2. I don't think anything about this poem is impractical. I read of a man giving advice to be confident but not arrogant, persistant and modest, not fighting fire with fire and setting realistic goals while remembering that we have a limited amount of time here in this "race" and it can be risky to "heap all your winnings" that can be thrown away quite quickly. I would definitely give this to my own future son.
ReplyDeleteq3. This is definitely ironic. Immediately in the first few lines I can tell that he's trying to paint a picture of a bunch of English men who are sending off the best of their sons to make this new country civilized. Obviously teaching the natives to be like them would be such a burden.
Q1: From a very young age, humans tend to ask questions. We utilize the "serving men" of What, Why, When, How, Where, and Who to make sense of our world; they serve to give us understanding. Sadly, adults tend to crush this desire for knowledge out of children by being impatient with their questions. Kipling, however, seems to acknowledge that maybe adults do not ask enough questions, because his serving men are at rest "from nine till five" and at all meals. Adults are so caught up in work and social obligations that they forget learning never ends. I think Kipling is encouraging young children to ask questions. Children are the "different folk [which] have different views." They are curious about the world, as we all should be.
ReplyDeleteQ4: I think it is very obvious that the speaker is not very fond of the Widow at Windsor. From the gates, he refers to her crown as hairy, which in a way characterizes her as beast-like. The speaker is upset by some of her actions, showing sympathy for the people who receive poor treatment under her rule. For example, "she pays...poor beggars in red./(Ow, poor beggars in red!)" (lines 4-5). He points out that all of the Widow's riches were not gained by her own merit: "we 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,/ An' we've salted it down with our bones." (lines 18-19). Obviously, the speaker is not fond of his queen, but instead feels quite unpatriotic toward his country's leader.
2. I feel like the poem “If” is full of sarcasm. The advice in the poem is dark and nearly impossible for any kid to achieve. It is awful advice from a Victorian gentleman. I think that this was common in the Victorian era where their values regularly contradicted their actions. A part that really stuck out to me is when, “If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;/If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim” making me think about how contradictory this poem really is. How are you suppose to think and not make them what you wish to achieve? This makes me think of being completely ruled by the empire. Doing exactly what it wants you to do always without your thoughts intervening.
ReplyDelete3. I definitely believe this is a character and not the narrator speaking. He is unreliable as well. He is very sarcastic in what he is saying is the “White Man’s Burden.” We are definitely suppose to find them ironic. This plays into the sarcasm of the poem. It is satirical in the sense that he is praising all these critical behaviors that the British Empire does; but he does it in a way that makes it seem like he is on the White Man’s side.
Q1: Kipling is trying to teach children to not question the world so much. These serving-men are all questions that a kid may ask, but if they ask too many the answers can become jumbled up together or even unpleasant. The “person small” is referring to a child.
ReplyDeleteIf you read it after reading “The Widow at Windsor”, it can also be a subtle jab at the queen for sending out all those soldiers to do her bidding. The narrator made a point of saying that they let their serving-men rest while the “person small” did not. Queen Victoria sent her serving-men “abroad” to fight her battles and take what she wanted.
Q2: The advice that is offered seems like good advice when it stands alone, but when lumped together it becomes something else. It becomes a weight of expectations that could easily crush someone. Some parts of it don’t even work with the rest of the poem, such as how it says to not lie or hate and to be all these things that can make a person “good” and yet turn right around and say “And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise”. It sounds practical, it seems like it’s good, and it’s probably said with good intentions; but it is a bear trap forged out of impossible standards for what it means to “be a Man”. This is not good advice for anyone.
Cheyenne Counts
ReplyDeleteQ1. I believe that this poem attempts to impart to children the importance of questioning, because it "serves" the purpose of gaining knowledge and broadening the imagination, as hinted at by the narrator's serving men being sent over land, sea, east, and west. Obviously, the person small is a child. Just as children over-question everything, so does the person small have ten million serving-men who are always kept busy, since the child does not have a job, like the narrator, that stems the tide of inquiry and wonderment. In addition, the person small's preferment of Hows, Wheres, and Whys also seems reflective of a child's questions, since they are the basic ones to learning how things/occurrences operate and function.
Q4. The soldier narrator in this poem seems to be disenchanted with both his queen and the work of soldiers. His asides throughout the work undercut the glories he outlines within the main stanzas: "barbarious war," "poor beggars," "they'll never see 'ome!". He additionally references the unsatisfying and punishing tasks soldiers are assigned to such as wars, maintenance of territories, and the sacrificing of their lives for queen and country.