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Tue 5 Feb, 2013 05:52 am
Hi, I'm having trouble understanding "burden" and "It’s at the bottom of half our beastliness to the natives."in the following text. Could anyone explain to me? Thank you.
‘Seditious?’ Flory said. ‘I’M not seditious. I don’t want the Burmans to drive us
out of this country. God forbid! I’m here to make money, like everyone else. All I object to is the slimy white man’s burden humbug. The pukka sahib pose. It’s so boring. Even those bloody fools at the Club might be better company if we weren’t all of us living a lie the whole time.’
‘But, my dear friend, what lie are you living?’
‘Why, of course, the lie that we’re here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them. I suppose it’s a natural enough lie. But it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you can’t imagine. There’s an everlasting sense of being a sneak and a liar that torments us and drives us to justify ourselves night and day. It’s at the bottom of half our beastliness to the natives. We Anglo-Indians could be almost bearable if we’d only admit that we’re thieves and go on thieving without any humbug.’
The expression in its entirety is "the white man's burden." It comes from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, entitled The White Man's Burden. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain, and, among other territory, they took over the Philippine Islands. Kipling published his poem in 1899, and it was then subtitled: The United States and the Philippine Islands. This is the first stanza of the poem:
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.
Essentially, Kiping was saying that the people of thw world who were not white Europeans, or of white European descent, could not govern their own affairs, and therefore the white men who conquered their nations had an obligation to manage their affairs for them--that's the white man's burden. Flory is saying that the white man's burden is humbug, that they're not in Burma to help their little brown brothers, but just to serve their self-interest.
"At the bottom half of . . . " is not an expression with which i am familiar. Perhaps it's common among the English. As i see it from context, Flory is describing the unacknowledged underside of their lofty claims to be there to help the Burmese, and that underside, that bottom half is that they are there to rob them.
@Setanta,
Thank you for your detailed answer. That really helps a lot!!
@lizfeehily,
I am always willing to help if i can.
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