Empire Writing
Going into a course that isn’t the typical literature class that we all grow up with such as American Literature or British Literature that we all take in high school seems intimidating and scary, however it is not something that you should be scared of. Going into this course I took both British literature with Chaucer and Mary Shelly as well as Indian Literature with Gandhi and The Ramayana. Having this background going into Empire Writing I had more of a history on the time period and the cultural reflection that others may not have. With a previous interest in Kipling through the Jungle Book and reading him in the previously to entering these classes. My interest in Indian literature helped to keep me engaged during the course. Throughout Empire Writing, I kept thinking about the materials that we were reading such as Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” and other more works with political undertones. These works were a little more shocking because I had my head set on other literary works such as the Ramayana and The Jungle Book and going into a more politically and real work such as Kim threw me off just a little bit. Being able to look at works that expose the true thoughts and impressions from both the British and the Indians was interesting due to my experience in studying only one at a time and never making the connections between the two. While reading Kim I was able to imagine a little Mowgli and how the ability to conform to the environment yet never fitting in seemed like a common theme when it came to the people who lived in India. Also, being an orphaned boy, the connection also seems to present the theme with Kipling’s works. While reading through Kipling’s Kim it was easy to forget about the intense politics that was happening in the book at the time because it was so slight and focused on the coming of age in Kim. When the political innuendos did appear, it did make it more difficult to understand but that is where “White Man’s Burden” helped to understand the stance that the Indians had towards the British. I think that this kind of prejudice is hard for us to understand because it isn’t something that we have experienced ourselves which is where the additional readings from Kipling and An ABC for Baby Patriots comes into play with the cultural background that we would need to understand the intense emotions that are presented in the works that we read in the course.
Course Work:
Throughout the semester we wrote four papers which reflected the work that we were reading and our ability to understand the cultural significance and connect it with the work and the history. Below are the links to the four essays and two reviews of the sources that were provided for the class.
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