Polarity of Post-Colonial Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of the Poems, “The White Man’s Burden” and “The Black Man’s Burden”

Abstract

Polarity of ideas is inevitable as long as we live with individuals. People are in arguments in their ideas regarding the very essence and fate of post-colonial literature and post-colonial philosophy at large. From the very beginning, regardless critics’ differences on their perception and stand towards post-colonial discourse, post-colonial discourse  in this period is full of imperialism effects; a discourse expected to be a reactionary theory in which the hangover or remnants on misdeeds and wrong perceptions of colonial discourse upon the colonized nations will critically be considered; Thus,  some are infavour of postcolonial, and the rest side against post-colonial literature, and both sides have their own justifications. To this effect, two intertextually constructed texts; namely the poems, “The White Man’s Burden†and “The Black Man’s Burden†are used. Before the actual analysis and interpretation of the poems under discussion from polarity of postcolonial discourse perspective dialectically made, in this article, an endeavor has been attempted to establish the background, and the conceptual framework to review what scholars have suggested about the poems underdiscussion is made. From which a conclusion on the analysis of poems based on the imperial effects upon culture is made as the poems are the texts which reveal the polarity of post-colonial discourse practically. As we can understand from the poems’ titles, “The White Man’s Burden†and “The Black Man’s Burdenâ€, the first poem is a poem which leads us to access the later one in the form of opposition. Surprisingly, the opposition is done in verse level of the poems, and that is why the poems (though they might have different versions) have the same number of lines; the pattern of writing is composed by providing the opposite concept of each verse/line, even in some cases, the opposition is made in word level of each line of verse.