Rudyard Kipling was considered by his peers to be an excellent satirist. Many of the leading minds of his time, including Mark Twain, met him in person and recognized him as an equal. One of the things Kipling subtly criticized through his poetry was the traditional association of the upper class with superior knowledge. This essay will examine Gunga Din, Tommy, and Gentlemen-Rankers to show how Kipling inverts the class hierarchy by presenting a character at or near the bottom of the human social ladder as having a higher level of intuition, enlightenment, or human decency than base compared to Gunga Din, Tommy and Gentlemen-Rankers. to those who are conventionally considered “above” him. Kipling does not overtly present irony and relies on specific literary techniques to achieve it. This essay will present examples of the techniques used by Kipling to establish and then undermine conventional class assumptions. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In all three poems, Kipling begins by letting his readers know who is speaking. It does this by narrating in the first person singular and altering conventional English spelling to reflect the speaker's accent. This is not a technique unique to Kipling; Dickens also used it in Oliver Twist. When the text is read aloud exactly as written, the accent sends the contemporary reader a very clear signal about the speaker's class and origins. The reader then inserts some unwritten assumptions about the speaker's education, life experiences, and future prospects. Since Kipling's time the English language has changed and entirely new dialects have developed, so distinct from each other as to be mutually incomprehensible. It is therefore necessary to interpret Kipling's implied pronunciation and etymology according to the conventions of his time. In Gunga Din and Tommy, Kipling's narrator drops the terminal "f," "g," and "d" along with many "h" sounds and adjusts the pronunciation of words like “half” and “get.” This is consistent with the Cockney English dialect originating in London. So the narrators of Gunga Din and Tommy were not born in India like Kipling himself, nor are they from Scotland, Ireland, nor he from Scotland or Ireland. Furthermore, they do not have the cultured language and grammatical precision of the gentleman narrator of Gentlemen-Rankers, who pronounces every letter. Thus, in the very first line of each poem Kipling establishes the origin and hereditary social status of the speaker. Along with the class signal are some assumptions about the speaker's life experiences and education level. All three narrators are military, but their positions and perspectives differ greatly. Gunga Din tells the story of a former British soldier's interaction with the bhisti or regimental water carrier while serving in India during the era of Queen Victoria. The eponymous water carrier, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a goatskin water bag, ran back and forth behind the lines providing water to thirsty British troops. This has been an essential service throughout history, especially in India, where the heat and humidity can become so oppressive that people need to drink more than five liters of water a day even when they aren't exercising. The Model 1853 Enfield musket-rifles used by most British troops in the mid-19th century were mostly phased out and replaced by breech-loading Snider Enfield rifles starting in 1866 and Martini-Henry rifles in the mid-1870s Nineteenth century. Kipling was born in 1865,when he was able to observe and understand the things and people around him, soldiers no longer had to open gunpowder cartridges with their teeth. But the smoke from gunpowder charges was still a very strong desiccant, so a man who repeatedly fired his rifle would invariably develop dry mouth. Dry mouth is also a physiological response to stress, and because being shot is stressful, even a soldier who doesn't breathe gunpowder smoke eventually empties his canteen. He or she cannot leave his position to get more water without giving up a tactical advantage. Hence the need for water supplies and regimental bhisti. Another of Kipling's strategies for describing a character quickly but vividly is to use a key word to quickly establish location, time, and setting without the need for long descriptions. The keyword might allude to a specific time or place, or it might have cultural connotations. Speakers in Gunga Din use the word bhisti, which means “water carrier”, however the word has a historical and cultural context. The Bhisti people are an endogamous community of Northern India. They speak Urdu, using the Persian-Arabic script, but are familiar with the predominant language in the region where they live. Nowadays they can be found in many major cities of India working in various professions and trades. Some still carry water for a living. However in Kipling's time the need for manual water transport was much more urgent and military water carriers traveled wherever the regiment went. Kipling, who was born in India and returned as an adult, had an intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of India and its people. Living and working as he did in northern India and the territory that eventually became Pakistan, Kipling associated with all sorts of people of different castes and classes, particularly through his military connections and his Masonic connections. Kipling's first language was Hindi, which is related to Urdu but not identical, although he learned English early and wrote mainly in that language. Living as he did in northern India, he could not have avoided coming across at least some ethnic Bhisti, and he had the linguistic skills to speak to them. According to Bhisti history, the Bhisti were originally of the Rajput Hindu warrior caste. Like many groups within a given caste, over the generations they have developed a professional specialty: bringing water to thirsty soldiers. At some point most of the Bhisti people accepted Islam, but by now their professional specialization had been elevated to cultural commitment. Many Bhisti chose to serve any soldier they could find, including the European armies of France and Britain who fought for political and economic control of the Indian subcontinent. In Kipling's time, there was an urgent and constant need for water on the front line, so each regiment needed at least one designated water carrier, and the Bhisti were so successful in this role that their name, lacking the first capital letter, became synonymous with the role of water bearer. Hence the “regimental bhisti, Gunga Din”. With one word, just one, Kipling defines Gunga Din as a man who carries water not just as a vocation but as an avocation. state. Yet in Gunga Din, as in much of Kipling's prose including The Man Who Would Be King, characters who indulge in blatantly racist assumptions about the people around them generally turn out to be shortsightedly wrong. The narrator of Gunga Din describes the Bhisti as “black-faced,” dirty, and “squishy”-nosed. However, when he describes how Gunga Din went to cure thewounded under fire, the narrator describes him as “white” inside. For a racist (who surely is the narrator), the highest compliment possible is to identify another person who behaves like a person of the racist's ethnic group. But the narrator does not know Gunga Din well. Although Gunga Din speaks clearly and understands enough English to convey an important and timely thought in a grammatically correct sentence even as he dies, the narrator persists in shouting orders at him in poor Anglo-Hindustani. There is no meaningful friendship or social contact between the men, so explicit conversations about deeper topics such as religious faith or Gunga Din's hometown and native language cannot occur. If Gunga Din is Hindu, which could perhaps be inferred given the loincloth he wore and the fact that he serves as a Bhisti but is not necessarily ethnic Bhisti: then bringing water to thirsty soldiers is part of his dharma or religious duty . Receiving abuse from the soldiers he helps is simply an inherent aspect of this, and taking the bad along with the good bothers him very little. When he brings water to the English soldiers and is beaten by some because he is physically unable to serve them all at once, he does not complain. Why he should: He is a man celebrating a divinely appointed sacrament. In fact, the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, chapter 2, verse 47, says: “Your right concerns only duty, not its fruits. Don't act on the results of your actions. Never be attached to not doing your duty." With Gunga Din's dying breath, he has no regard for anything other than whether he has properly performed his duty. Ha: The drink he gives the narrator, which survives only as a direct result of Gunga Din's actions, is the drink that the narrator describes as the sweetest and best he has ever drunk, despite the poor quality of the water. Consequently, the absolute last place the narrator could see a Hindu Gunga Din would be the Hell he deems appropriate for himself: Gunga Din must be reincarnated in a role commensurate with the appropriateness of his service, which was spectacular. If Gunga Din is not Hindu but Islamic, like most of the Bhisti ethnic group, then his clothing is unusual but his level of linguistic fluency is not. Din not only speaks his native language fluently, but speaks enough English to say something truly meaningful at the end of his life. Since most men raised in the Islamic tradition learn Arabic in addition to their native language, to better understand the teachings of the Quran, if Gunga Din is Islamic then he most likely speaks not one, not two, but three languages: his own , Arabic and enough English to understand the narrator and others. This makes him much more educated than the British soldier, who is blissfully unaware of the discrepancy. Illiteracy among the rank-and-file was common in Kipling's India, and although sergeants were supposed to be able to read and write English, rank-and-file men did not. Being a Sunni Muslim, Gunga Din would be familiar with the principle of submission to Allah's will army and destiny: if Allah had decided that Gunga Din should be born Bhisti, then by working as a water carrier Gunga Din is fulfilling his spiritual destiny and serving Allah as well as the British soldiers. His selfless and tireless dedication to his work, the superb manner in which he carries out his duties without complaint, and his death in the service of others would therefore surely have guaranteed him a place in Heaven according to the tenets of Islam. Indeed, although Gunga Din did as many natives who served the English did, and converted to Christianity, he earned his salvation either by this or by riskingand even sacrificing his own life to save the narrator, who is a very noble Christ. similar act. Why, then, would the narrator expect to see Gunga Din in Hell, and still as a servant? It is because Kipling's narrator is supposedly ignorant. This is part of what creates pervasive irony. Gunga Din's narrator betrays his ignorance repeatedly and ironically throughout the poem. Referring to Gunga Din as an “old idol” is offensive both to Hindus, who view idols as physical representations of and connections to their gods, and to Muslims who are prohibited from worshiping idols altogether. He physically and verbally abuses the heroic water carrier who routinely saves wounded soldiers under fire, including the narrator. However, by the end of the poem it becomes obvious that time has brought the narrator a certain perspective. He acknowledges that Gunga Din was indeed created by God and also states that the bhisti he so frequently abused is actually a better man than him. Therefore the man in the “highest” social position ultimately comes to the same conclusion that the reader has already reached: he is the man lowest in the social hierarchy who displays a higher level of spirituality, service, courage, education, and service to others. The narrator of Tommy is also a British soldier, but instead of spreading the abuse as the narrator of Gunga Din did, he receives it from British civilians. Kipling establishes the narrator's class and heritage through his speech patterns, which are similar to those of the narrator in Gunga Din but devoid of Indian words and references. Kipling also uses key words to establish the poem's setting or location (England), approximate time period, profession, and the narrator's relationship with local civilians. These are radically different from the keywords used in Gunga Din, but the technique used by Kipling is the same. The first key words that appear in the poem are "public-house", "pint" and "beer". Beer, the quintessential British drink, is sold to the general public in pints. Most establishments specializing in the sale of beer are therefore called "public houses" or "pubs". Many Britons have a favorite pub or 'club' where they go to socialize with friends after work. So a pint of beer in a pub is almost a British stereotype. But the narrator cannot purchase the libation because the “publican,” or owner, refuses to serve the “redcoats.” So in two lines, Kipling establishes the place (England), the profession and the gender of the speaker (a soldier, and by definition male in Kipling's time). Kipling also shows that the publican, a civilian, has the authority to refuse service to the soldier and that the maids think the whole situation is funny. The key word "red coat" refers to the uniform of a British Army soldier. or Marines. The colors were distinct from those of the British Navy, which favored blue and white. In India, in Kipling's time, the British Army had moved away from the highly impractical red and white uniforms and had issued khaki uniforms to the military starting in 1948 and increasingly after the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 as an indicator of an important change in British foreign policy. As a result, the term "red coat" identifies the narrator as a soldier in the navy or army, but not someone who served in India. Kipling establishes the period between 1861 and 1901 by referring to his military dress as "the widow's uniform". The word "widow" is capitalized despite not being at the beginning of a sentence or line, and since the narrator has already been established as a British soldier, the only head of state he could have been talking about is theQueen Victoria. Queen Victoria was only widowed upon the death of her first and only husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1861, although she wore black for the rest of her life. His predecessor and successor, William IV and Edward VII respectively, were both male. But, if Kipling had instead used the word "Queen" to refer to her, the poem could have been set as early as 1837. Tommy has an unusual naming convention that illustrates the extent to which the narrator and his fellow soldiers are dehumanized. The narrator is called "Tommy" or "Atkins", both generic names for a British soldier, but which are most likely not the narrator's real name. The people speaking to the narrator are strangers he has most likely never met. Kipling never uses the soldier's real name nor does he show civilians interacting with him as a human being. In this regard his fellow Englishmen show him even less respect than the narrator of Gunga Din showed the water-carrier. "Tommy" and his comrades are despised or exalted if the nation is at war. Both images are equally unrealistic, particularly when even positive public behaviors treat soldiers as nameless, fungible members of a group rather than the individual human beings they actually are. Throughout the poem, Tommy's narrator tells how badly he is treated. by English civilians in peacetime: refused service in a pub, turned away from a theater (while sober) in favor of a drunken civilian, and generally treated like a criminal. But when “the guns begin to fire,” the narrator and his fellow soldiers are treated as heroes even though they personally have done nothing heroic. This situational irony is so obvious that even the low-ranking and poorly educated Tommy recognizes and resents it. That "Tommy" is an enlisted soldier and not an officer is quite obvious even if Kipling need not say it outright: the use of Cockney patois suffices. Officers in Kipling's time were almost always educated, literate men from families wealthy enough to pay their commission. The higher the officer's rank, the greater his likely (or presumed) social ties. An officer was presumed to be a gentleman in terms of social conduct, habits and peer relations, even if he was not descended from a financially independent family. So no publican or theater employee would be inclined to anger someone by denying them service. In Tommy, as in Gunga Din, Kipling drops a bombshell in the last line of the poem. The narrator, who begins by using the first person singular to describe his personal anecdotal experience, expands in the penultimate stanza to use the first person plural. Now "we" are the soldiers who most resemble the reader. The narrator is gathering strength and now speaks as a representative of a group when he asks that people simply have reasonable expectations of soldiers and that soldiers be treated “rationally” based on their individual traits and behaviors rather than as representatives of some amorphous red world. coated blob. But in the final line, Kipling suddenly switches to the third person: "And Tommy is no flowering fool, you can bet Tommy sees!" Now he is issuing a direct warning to civilians and upper-class people whose insistence on interacting with soldiers in unrealistic and exaggerated ways, both positive and negative. Their stupidity and hypocrisy do not go unnoticed, and in fact every single “Tommy” in the red uniform is perfectly aware of it. Generally it is the upper classes who reprimand the lower classes. For an enlisted soldier,treated by many as the lowest of the low, to not only berate but also subtly threaten the citizens served by his army is a dramatic class inversion. Identifying himself, and all the other soldiers, as perfectly capable of seeing and recognizing the hypocrisy that everyone else seems not to grasp, the poorly educated Tommy flips the script intellectually in the same way Gunga Din has done morally and spiritually: he demonstrates , with his deduction and analysis, to be more intellectually capable than the people who shun and criticize him. Gentlemen-Rankers describes a different kind of class inversion. In this case, the title describes men who have voluntarily stepped down from class and placed themselves under the authority of men who under normal circumstances would have been considered lower than them in terms of social status. In Kipling's time, military officers typically came from the upper class and received special education both social and academic. A "gentleman", in the terminology of the time, was a man wealthy enough to live off his land and his invested assets, who did not have to perform manual labor to feed himself or his family. Originally the term implied the landed gentry, but after the agricultural depression in the 1870s the British economy shifted from land as a means of production to industry. As a result, merchants, bankers, and other entrepreneurs became wealthy enough to raise their children and grandchildren in a privileged environment so that by the third generation their values, behaviors, and life experiences were virtually indistinguishable from those of the landed gentry, with whom they often they got married. Military service was considered an appropriate pursuit for a young gentleman, but he generally entered it as an officer by purchasing a commission. The British Army of Kipling's era was characterized by a vast social divide between the officer and enlisted classes, yet there was also great mutual respect. Officers respected the skills, tenacity, and raw courage of the men they commanded; enlisted men who came from the working class respected their officers for their education, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. This mutual respect and trust helped build the military discipline that made Britain a dominant colonial power. However, respect was not automatic and was not bestowed upon a man simply because of his specific rank. When a man did not belong and was noticeably different from his peers, despite his expertise in other matters, he was often denied respect by men above, below, and equal to him in rank. Although there were means by which an enlisted man could be promoted to lieutenant, it was not a process deemed universally good. The Duke of Wellington and General Redvers Buller, writing almost half a century apart, stated that officers promoted from the conscript ranks were rarely good or effective, even if men so promoted had been officers in the past. Privates preferred officers who were gentlemen, believing them to be more educated in military strategy and also less cruel. Gentlemen typically joined the ranks of privates only if they had somehow fallen out of favor and needed to hide abroad, away from creditors, family, or law enforcement. In exchange for the anonymity of the uniform, a man sacrificed his social standing not just momentarily, but permanently. In Gentlemen-Rankers, Kipling uses specific literary techniques to show the implications of the young man's decision and the sense of alienation he feels as a result. As always, Kiplinguses a speaking style as evidence of the narrator's class. The gentleman speaks without missing letters or using slang. His use of compound sentences and his references to the Bible and Shakespeare's Hamlet mark him as a cultured man. Although now a humble soldier, he "managed his own six horses": that is, he was once rich enough to own half a dozen prize racehorses, and skilled enough to ride them himself. The implication is that the narrator has lost all his wealth, perhaps through gambling or some other shameful act, and has consequently enlisted to serve overseas. The fact that his uniform includes a spur, sewn onto his worsted jacket, as a testament to his exceptional horsemanship, now embarrasses him. Every time someone calls him “Knight” (normally a title of respect) or sends him on an errand on horseback, it reminds him of what he has lost. He therefore feels "branded" by what for most enlisted men would be a coveted insignia. The Shakespearean reference "a little more than kin and less than kind" is Hamlet's cutting remark about his uncle Claudius, who becomes Hamlet's stepfather by marrying his daughter. late brother's wife. The world was “more than kin” while the narrator had enough money to satisfy himself and everyone else, but now the sergeant is “less than kind” in two ways: he is fundamentally different from the narrator, having been born into a class appropriate to the enlisted ranks, and he also fails to show the narrator the deference and courtesy he is accustomed to receiving from such men in his former life. The habits that mark a gentleman—riding well, waltzing well, and lacking the non-lamb-like aggression prized among working-class men—now turn the narrator into a target of ridicule. He lacks the natural aptitude and early training of his enlisted peers, but finds himself absorbing some of their values: literally beating someone up for pointing out his dancing skills and, figuratively speaking, drowning himself in beer. Yet the extent to which the soldier now feels trapped by his circumstances only becomes clear through Kipling's use of sarcasm. Kipling repeatedly uses the word "sweet" to sarcastically describe things that the young gentleman now feels bitter about: cleaning stalls, emptying kitchen waste, and socializing with enlisted men and servants. While the men around him accept occasional tasks as a normal part of their routine, the narrator has been raised to believe that work is offensive and shameful. He feels permanently degraded for doing this. This is one of the reasons why he envies the simple man who shines his boots and sometimes accidentally calls him "sir". For the narrator of Gentlemen-Rankers, his class reversal, though voluntary, was a grotesque mistake. He feels degraded by having to share a whitewashed room with a man who snores or mumbles drunkenly. The guilt he feels for not writing home or for not keeping several unspecified vows is not enough to make him pick up a pen or keep his promises, but it is enough to wake him up at night. To relieve the self-inflicted pain, he takes drugs and considers it justifiable behavior. Kipling's narrator alludes to the curse of Reuben, a biblical character who was disinherited for having sexual relations with one of his father's concubines. Reuben was not exiled, but was stripped of his birthright in favor of one of his younger brothers. Perhaps disinherited, and certainly ashamed, the narrator feels as if he can never return home. The extreme shame he feels is.