Civilize The Uncivilised In 'White Man's Burden'

The White Man’s Burden was a poem that showed the United States’ shift from being an isolated country to an imperialist country where they started to expand their influence and reign throughout other countries. The white men, who symbolized the US, believed it was a burden upon themselves to civilize the uncivilized countries. They thought as themselves as some higher power that did everything right, therefore they needed to spread their culture everywhere else. Authors often give one of the characters the attitude that they need to “civilize the uncivilized,” or that their ways of doing things are the only correct ways. In the story of The White Man’s Burden, Kipling conveys that the American’s burden was to civilize the uncivilized by ruling over other countries through the expansion of imperialism, which is Nathan Price’s mentality in Barbara Kingsolver’s, The Poisonwood Bible, when he doesn't let the …show more content…
Instead of Nathan going down himself, he brought along his wife, Orleanna, and his four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. They stayed down there for several years, learning to adapt to their new surroundings, however they were trying their best to make it feel like an American society. Nathan believed that it was him and his family’s “duty” to civilize their neighbors in Kilanga, whereas it actually shouldn't be just one family’s duty to do so. In order to convert a whole communities style of living and their religion, there would need to be a mass group attempting to do it, rather than one family of six. As readers may have picked up on throughout the beginning of the novel, and even towards the end, the Congolese people don't really like the way Nathan teaches and goes against their beliefs. This obviously caused conflict because of the different perspectives and nobody subjecting to