The White Man's Burden Essay

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The White Man's Burden, by Rudyard Kipling, suggested that the cultural development of people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds should be encourage until they can take their place in the world by fully adopting Western ways. According to this perspective the advancement of western political, cultural, or religious beliefs is a missionary activity. The colonial empire was motivated at least in part by the idea that it was the "white man's burden" to civilize "backward" peoples (Jalic Inc). The colonization of native cultures by imperialist powers is emulated in The Tempest. The character of Caliban is considered primeval, he is the child of a sorceress and a devil, his savage nature is intended to symbolize man's primitive instincts …show more content…

For this reason, Prospero feels a moral justification in imposing his English values. Nonetheless, Prospero imposing slavery and demoralizing Caliban appears to a representative allegory of the Europeans who appropriated the land of the indigenous and enslaved them. Like the European legends of savages, Prospero, in this play, describes Caliban as deformed, evil smiling, treacherous, drunkard, violent, savage, and devil worshipping. In the essay Of Cannibals Michael de Montaigne describes that when coming to native lands these cultures that do not have the same customs are labeled as barbaric, where in fact, colonizers are the brutes because in not recognizing their societies as having equal importance they are judged as uncivilized when in fact that they are above, “lying, falsehood, (and the) treason” of the so called civilized world. These very words are echoed by Gonzalo, “For, certes, these are people of the island, who, thought they are monstrous shape, yet note, their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our human generation”

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