Overland Mail

 

Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “Overland Mail”, details India’s vast jungles as a wild and exotic place that the British had to colonize and tame. The poem shows the perils and dangers that are out in the jungle, but as the runner and reader get closer to the British exile civilizations the jungle becomes tame and conquered. This reading of the poem can be used to support the British colonialism and details the binary division between the Indian and British landscape and metaphorically the people and cultures. The poem begins with the sun going down and the runner beginning the journey to deliver the mail to the British exiles, who have left the cities to escape the summer heat. “With a ingle of bells as the dusk gathers in, He turns to the footpath that heads up the hill”. The second and third stanza show how the timing of the day and the turning of the night all lead up to the entrance into the jungle, where robbers and tigers lurk and the roads are constantly falling apart from rain and many different routes have to be taken to reach the final destination. But the closer the reader/ runner get to civilization (the British camp) the better the landscape and terrain become. “ From aloe to rose- oak, from rose-oak to fir, from level to upland, from upland to crest… The world is awake and the clouds are aglow. For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail:” This stanza shows that the setting not only turns from dark to light in the stanzas closer to the end but they also go higher up. The runner is climbing clear to the top of a crest to reach the British exiles and the sun himself comes out to great them. It is very interesting to see that the British people are put on a very high pedestal in this poem with just the details of their surroundings. The forest around the British isn’t littered with tigers and thieves and the roads and the terrain become much easier to travel on. The jungle itself becomes more civilized the more “British it becomes”. The dark and untamed Indian jungle is cast with mystery and doubt while the bright and happy surroundings of the British camp are filled with certainty and power. The binary division of the landscape can be metaphoric of the Indian people. The more they turn away from the British rule the more savage and wild they become, they turn towards the darkness. But it they turn towards the light and the British way they will rise up out of the jungle and into civilization. It is an interesting and really shows the native people’s interpellation (where subjects come to internalize the dominant values of society and think of their place in society in a particular way.) or maybe it is a mockery of the British rule. They are putting them so far up on a pedestal that it is painfully obvious and it is calling for readers to notice the issue of British power and dominance.

My Opinion: 

This poem is an amazing way to introduce a class to Postcolonialism. Even though this poem represents a orientalist time it still allows us as students with a place to start. We all should know about the British rule in India and modern day Pakistan, but what we didn't know is about the division and war for independence of the country other than what we have heard about Gandhi. This poem allows the reader to see right into the stereotypes of Orientalism with the sexualized runner and how the whole world seems to revolve around the British. 

Orientalism: 

Orientalism is the representation of the East in western art and ideology. The stereotypes of Orientalism are that the orient is timeless, strange and fascinating  racial stereotypes, and females are sexualized and males are feminine. 

- here a woman is sexualized, while the men all just sit around. 

This shows a timelessness the people and objects are just blurs-  

- this shows the strange and fascinating aspects people focused on in orientalism

This orientalist painting shows a white woman up on a bench and a black male below on the floor. representing orientalist racism-

Modern Colonialism/ Orientalism: 

- my favorite book series takes place during colonial time. She is British and living in India. The book shows many comments from the upper class in Britain about the rebellions in India

- A Little Princess shows many visions of India as an escape into a fantasy.