Characters and narrator

The poem “The Real White Man's Burden” by Ernest Howard Crosby is written as an ironic exhortation (appeal) to ‘the white man’- a symbol of the Americans - to go and take advantage of colonized peoples. In the poem, we can identify a speaker who addresses the ‘white man’ directly and two collective characters: the colonizers and the colonized.

The speaker

The unknown speaker addresses ‘the white man’ directly and advises him regarding the actions he should take as a colonizer of less developed peoples. Of course, these pieces of advice are fully ironical, as they describe how empires actually act in their colonies, according to the speaker’s perspective.

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The colonizers

The colonizers are presented through the critical speaker’s eyes. From his perspective, they are prone to violence and immoral behaviours towards the colonized peoples:

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The colonized

Unlike the colonizers, who are described from the poet’s perspective, the colonized peoples are portrayed from the point of view of ‘the white man’. Consequently, they are seen in such a way that can deem their conquering justifiable.

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