In "The White Man's Burden" how does Kipling portray the subjects of colonial rule and their rulers?

In “The White Man’s Burden” Rudyard Kipling portrays the subjects of colonial rulers as benighted, ignorant, and lazy people who are not sufficiently grateful to the colonial rulers who work hard and selflessly to help them.

Throughout this poem, we are told that the colonial rulers work hard and dedicate themselves to helping the people they rule.  In the first stanza, Kipling says that the white rulers must “bind your sons to exile/to serve your...

In “The White Man’s Burden” Rudyard Kipling portrays the subjects of colonial rulers as benighted, ignorant, and lazy people who are not sufficiently grateful to the colonial rulers who work hard and selflessly to help them.

Throughout this poem, we are told that the colonial rulers work hard and dedicate themselves to helping the people they rule.  In the first stanza, Kipling says that the white rulers must “bind your sons to exile/to serve your captives need.”  He says that they “wait in heavy harness” on the people they have conquered.  In other words, these are people who are selflessly leaving their home countries to help the non-white people.  In the next stanza, Kipling emphasizes service again.  He says that the white people have to “abide” in “patience” and they have to do so for “another’s profit” and “another’s gain.” 

Throughout the rest of the poem, Kipling continues to hammer home the notion that the white people have to sacrifice for the sake of the non-white people.  He says that they “mark” the roads and ports that they make with their “living” and their “dead.”  He says that the whites will “fill the mouth of Famine/And bid the sickness cease.”  Throughout the poem, he depicts the colonial rulers as people who work selflessly and sacrifice themselves to help the people they have conquered.

While Kipling thinks highly of the colonial rulers, he scorns and despises their subjects.  He portrays them as lazy, ignorant, ungrateful people who are inferior to the whites who rule them.  We this attitude from the first stanza, where Kipling calls the ruled people “fluttered” (meaning they are flighty and unreliable) and “wild” and where he goes on to say that they are “half-devil and half-child.”  He then goes on to say that these people are lazy and not very bright.  He says in Stanza 3 that the people’s “sloth and Heathen folly” will destroy everything the white colonizers have worked for.  Finally, he says that the colonized people are ungrateful.  He says that they will resent their “betters” for trying to civilize them and will not appreciate all the whites have done.

From all of this, we can say that Kipling portrays the white colonial rulers as selfless people who sacrifice themselves for their captives while the captives are lazy, ignorant, ungrateful, and generally inferior to the whites.