By Asif Abbas
Rudyard Kipling was
born in 1865, in Bombay, India. Despite getting his education in England he
settled in India. He lived at a time when the sun did not sit on the British
Empire and traveled around various possessions of his mother country including
Canada, and New Zealand.
Some of his works
contain instances of Orientalism that reflect the views of the
colonists. Edward Said refers to some of his works as exemplifying colonial
attitude towards the Orient. Some intellectuals agree with Said, while others
have used Kipling's works to point out the limitations of Said's concept
of Orientalism.
Overland Mail, published in
1886, concerns the transportation of mails to the British officers who have
retreated to the Indian Hill stations to avoid the scorching hot summer. This
poem looks in particular to the journey undertaken by a runner, employed to
deliver mails up the hill to the British officers.
This article is copy protected!
|
Orientalist elements
are obvious as daylight in the poem, starting with the exotic, violent, and
dangerous Indian landscape as presented by Kipling. The Overland Mail presents
a clear distinction between the dangerous, exotic, and mysterious India, and
the civilized, and refined England by comparing the Indian jungle with the
systematic and advanced British mail system. This binary distinction in turn
creates a division between the colonized and colonizers. To undermine Indian
scenic beauty, and providing reasons for its colonization, the narrator sets
the Indian landscape against the British mail system as an obstacle. By presenting
the landscape as a threat to the British colonial system, the narrator furthers
the notion of India as wild, destructive, and savage, and shows England as
structured and civilized. There is no room for allowing the landscape to
interfere with the British mail system. However, this suggests that despite
difficulties with natural India, England will eventually overcome these
obstacles. The landscape only becomes less dangerous as the mail is delivered
to the British.
Kipling’s poem
mentions so many characteristics of the Indian landscape. ‘Lords of the Jungle’
come out at night. The runner faces treacherous weather. There is also a
mentioning of crests, ridges, and other difficulties that hamper the runner's
journey. Darkness is an important characteristic in the poem as the delivery
boy delivers the mails at night. This darkness can metaphorically be
interpreted as the intellectual and moral bankruptcy that Kipling believes is
engulfing India. The Sun shines only when the runner reaches the Hill Station
where the exiles are staying; another indication of the Orientalist mindset
that associates sunlight with the British. As stated by Said, a very
predominant Orientalist stereotype includes “where there is Western
civilization there is daylight, but a sinister darkness resides otherwise”.
In the poem, the
landscape progressively rises, taking the runner higher and higher. Reading
this figuratively, it depicts the British conquest of India. The surroundings
may be troublesome, the conquest may have offered difficulties, but the British
have overcome them and are now sitting high up on the mountain top. The
geography of the poem seems to applaud the conquering British. Like the runner,
once one moved up through the night of wild India, one comes to the civil
daylight of the British colonial rule. The Hill station is located above the
landscape like the Queen sitting above her subjects that are wild, dangerous
yet exotic.
By analyzing the
characters of the poem, it can be concluded that two characters hold special
importance: the robber and the runner. The robber, though, mentioned once in
the poem represents one of the many dangers that the wild landscape presents.
The runner must avoid the robber to deliver the mail safely. If we presume the
robber to be an Indian, then he is portrayed as a danger to the Imperial order
by threatening to steal the mail. The runner is presented as a subservient
subject of the Empire who has to go to any length to deliver the mail. He is
presented as an obedient, domesticated colonized subject. Thus in the minds of
the colonists, the colonized are either wild and barbaric that threaten the
colonial enterprise or they are domesticated and obedient. There is no middle
position that the colonized can achieve.
Thus, looking at the
landscape and the characters, we can conclude that the poem exemplifies various
Orientalist assumptions.
