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Nowadays, robots are a useful tool to help us in our everyday life but they are not such as intelligent as the robots that will be created in the future. Robots can help us in chores/tasks such as cleaning the bathroom, teaching humans how to do something, guiding humans somewhere, providing services, etc. But, will the implementation of robots in modern cities be a good choice in the future? “As mega-cities rise and technology reshapes the urban landscape, how will these changes affect in life in modern cities?” In this written research report, I am going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of robots in future modern cities.
Get original essayCurrently, some cities around the world are implementing robots to do certain jobs such as police in Dubai. These police robots were being created in Barcelona, Spain. “By 2050, 68 percent of the total global population will live in cities, according to the United Nations,” moreover, there will be more robots working and functioning.
As a result of more robots working in the future, there is going to be less employment. More jobs will be automated. This problem will be a negative effect as more people will be looking for a job. Maybe, in the future, waiters in restaurants will be replaced by robots or/and workers dedicated to the world of construction may also be replaced by robots. The levels of unemployment will rise rapidly.
The big use of electricity. Robots need electricity in order to function. So, if there are more robots in cities in the future, more electricity will be used. As a result of more electricity used, electricity is going to be more expensive than nowadays. Although electricity is renewable energy, countries will need to spend money on building more electricity generators.
The daily maintenance of robots in cities cost money, so the State has to spend more money to keep the robots cleaned, to check if they work well, etc. For example, one robots can be a malfunction and the state/government has to pay money in order to fix it. Robots do not have common sense, so if they are broken they would not know how to repair themselves and they would continue to not function well.
There is also another problem with the maintenance of robots. The problem is that some people are not careful with the services the government/state provides us.
If something goes wrong with the chip of the robot something wrong could happen. This could affect product quality, the quality of service, etc. Or maybe even a robot can explode due to a malfunction and cause damage to someone. Robots in the future need to have security measures if something goes wrong. For instance, a robot which is not functioning very well and instead of collecting trash is now throwing trash into the sea.
”Robots can certainly handle their prescribed tasks, but they typically cannot handle unexpected situations.” For example, one robot is working as a cleaner but, suddenly, next to the robot there is two people fighting with each other. As the robot is programmed to only clean, it cannot handle certain situations and it would be cleaning while the two people are fighting.
As another result of robots working in modern cities in the future, people will not do much physical activity. People in the future will be resting at their houses while robots are working. People will also have many comforts and they will not need to leave home much.
Robots have more abilities than humans in certain jobs. For example, humans take four hours to clean a whole square while robots can take two hours. In addition to that, “robots are more precise than humans; they don’t tremble or shake as human hands. Robots have smaller and versatile moving parts which help them in performing tasks with more accuracy than humans.” As a result, the product will be of a higher quality than a product made by humans.
Robots have more strength than humans. Robots can perform tasks that require a lot of strength that humans cannot do. So maybe in the future, we can do certain works with unlimited strength thanks to robots.
The implementation of robots in modern cities would improve services because they would do them faster than humans. For example, in a restaurant, you could ask a robot if you could eat a pizza and the robot would prepare it in a few seconds. It would also improve the world of tourism because robots maybe in the future can translate directly from one native speaker to another person who is from another country. Transportation through cities will be faster due to robotics.
The increase of productivity. Robots do not get tired of doing tasks as a human does. A robot can work for hours or days straight and not get tired. But humans does et tired. A person with no experience can get tired rapidly. But it also depends on the type of work. If it is blue-collar work, such as construction, humans would get tired in hours. On the other and, if it is a white-collar work, such as doctors, humans could spend more time working than blue-collar workers. That is the reason why there are more robots in blue-collar works than in white-collar works. ”Using robotic automation to tackle repetitive tasks makes complete sense. “Robots are designed to make repetitive movements. Humans, also by design, are not.”
Robots are eco-friendly, which means that it does not harm the environment. That is positive because cities in the future are going to be greener than the actual cities. Robots use electricity which does not contaminate and it is renewable energy so that it is unlimited. The levels of pollution will decrease and people will not suffer from lung diseases. In general, the levels of high temperatures which are mainly from Greenhouse gases will get down as time passes by.
The high demand of robots in the future will make all people working in the world of robotics including robot engineers to earn more money because the State and all multinational companies all around the world would like to have robots in their workplaces to increase their productivity.
Another advantage of robots in modern cities is that new jobs will be created. Maybe, in the future, there could be a new job created which it would be named artificial intelligence engineer. This job will probably be created because robots in the future will need to interact with humans in order to do their jobs. As I said before, the jobs which will be created or related to robotics will be in high demand, so people working there will earn more money than in actual or normal jobs. Humans need to take advantage of robots in order to improve the quality of life.
-Robots in the future will be designed with artificial intelligence so that people can interact with them. That is a useful tool because if someone needs help to do something, the person can ask the robot for help. That is very comfortable for humans as they do not need to ask another person/human for help and it is more efficient and fast.
In conclusion, robotics in modern cities has a lot of advantages and disadvantages. Robotics provides a lot of opportunities in the development of modern cities. New technologies including robotics will be part of a citizen's life. Thanks to robots the quality of life will be better in modern cities as they will make it easier to do tasks. I believe that humans should be careful in the future so that robots do not conquer the world. Robots are getting more intelligent and useful during the years, so the quality of life is going to increase notably. Robots in the future will get more accessible to buy because the price of robots will get down. Moreover, cities in the future will get smarter and more eco-friendly than cities in 2019. Robots will be good and positive for companies because they can increase their productivity. In my opinion, I think that robotics will improve people's quality of life and will also make cities in the future more unpolluted. I also think that robots will help companies and people to earn more money. The implementation of robots in cities will be innovative and positive.
Shakespeare’s “Richard III” mainly concerns itself with the royal court under the rule of the Yorks; however, occasionally, Shakespeare takes a break from portraying the lives of noblemen. These window scenes provide the audience with insight as to what the common people think about the drama ensuing in court, resulting in a greater perspective of the play as a whole. One of these scenes occurs in Act Two, Scene Three, where three citizens discuss the death of Edward IV and its ensuing power struggle concerning who the next king should be. After close analysis of this scenes language, it becomes apparent that this scene contributes to the idea in the play that, through their general knowledge and intuition, the citizens know that danger is imminent with the death of Edward IV and the power struggle of which Richard III is part.
Get original essayThe first few lines of this scene consist of the relaying of the news that Edward IV is dead. After the First Citizen tells the Second Citizen that the king is dead, the Second Citizen immediately replies with “seldom comes the better” (2.3.4). The footnote explains that this means that times are bad and are probably going to get worse. Basically, this is a premonition of bad things to come. Since this is the first thing the Second Citizen says after hearing about the death of Edward IV, the audience knows that the citizens are fully aware of the danger that is to come with the struggle for who is next in line for the throne. The Second Citizen goes on to say “I fear, I fear ‘twill prove a giddy world” (2.3.5). Not only is he elaborating on his intuition that there is peril to come, his repetition of the phrase “I fear” directly emphasizes how truly afraid he, and through representation, the other citizens, is of what is to come. Furthermore, the Third Citizen goes on to repeat the word “world,” when he states “look to see a troublous world,” emphasizing the danger that this death has for the entirety of mankind. After relaying the news of the death of the king once more, the Second Citizen goes on to appeal to God, saying “God help the while” (2.3.8). He is using this form of an apostrophe not only to provide insight as to how bad the situation may be, but also to call for help upon the only being in the universe who is left to help him and his fellow citizens in this perilous situation. This entire section of this scene illustrates that immediately upon the death of Edward IV, the citizens intuitively know that danger is coming.
As the scene unfolds, the citizens realize that the next in line to be king is Edward IV’s son, Richard, the Duke of York, referred to as York in this edition of the play. Upon this realization, the Third Citizen states, “Woe to that land that’s governed by a child,” lamenting his country because, as he sees it, York is too young to rule (2.3.11). Due to this statement, a debate about Henry XI ensues. The Second Citizen argues that the country may not be doomed, seeing as York’s council can rule until he is old enough to take over (2.3.12-15). The First Citizen agrees because “So stood the state when Henry the Sixth/ Was crowned in Paris but at nine months old” (2.3.16-17). The Third Citizen goes on to argue that this is not the only contribution to the good rule of Henry XI, but that additionally “the king/ Had virtuous uncles to protect his grace” (2.3.20-21). This historical allusion to Henry XI provides the audience with an insight of the common people. First, it shows that the common people have a vast knowledge about the world of politics. In fact, they have enough of this knowledge to think of past rulers and what made them great and apply these tactics to current or future leaders. This allows for them to formulate opinions and arguments on not only their leaders but also the state of affairs in their country. This proves that not only can the citizens know that danger is about to come to their country because of their intuition but also through their general knowledge. Additionally, this historical allusion shows how the common people view future success in court. If the ruler himself in unsuccessful, or unable to be successful yet in the case of York, the common people still have two outlets for hope that they will be ruled benevolently. The first of these hopes is the royal council, and the second of these hopes is the ruler’s family.
Despite the citizens having a little bit of hope for the future, these feelings soon disappear when they think of the eminent power struggle between York’s mother, Queen Elizabeth, and her family and Richard III and his allies. The Third Citizen emphasizes this when he states “Better it were they all came by his father,/ Or by his father there were none at all” (2.3.23-24). By this, the Third Citizen means that it would be better if all of York’s uncles were on his father’s side or if he had no uncles on his father’s side because then there would not be this intense power struggle. His use of anastrophe, or sentence inversion, emphasizes the depth and wisdom of these words, seeing as if this were true, there would not be any issue with the future rulers or the future of the country. The use of anastrophe is used again when the Third Citizen states, “O, full of danger is the Duke of Gloucester [Richard]” (2.3.27). This again emphasizes the wisdom of the common people because the Third Citizen says this from sheer intuition; however, as the audience knows, he is correct in this idea that Richard is a villain and is ill fit for the throne. The weight of this line is also emphasized through the use of an interjection, “O,” which draws attention to what is being said and stressed the impending peril that comes alongside Richard III. Much like the first part of this scene, this section demonstrates the citizens’ instinctive knowledge that peril is to come if this power struggle is to continue and if Richard III gains any power.
The citizens know there is danger to come with the death of Edward IV and the resulting power struggle not because they were told but because of their general sense of knowing and intuition. In order to prove to his fellow citizens that there is a problem at hand, the Third Citizen states: When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks; When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand; When the sun sets, who doth not look for night? Untimely storms makes men expect a dearth. All may be well, but if God sort it so, ‘Tis more than we deserve or I expect. (2.3.32-37) Through this use of multiple metaphors, the Third Citizen is basically saying that when there are certain signs, men should not ignore them. This is an allusion to their intuition that their country is in danger with the eminent power struggle. If all will be well as the First Citizen states, then it is more than the people expect because, at this rate, the country will be in peril. An example of this intuition can be seen when the Second Citizen states, “Truly, the hearts of men are full of fear:/ You cannot reason almost with a man/ That looks not heavily and full of dread” (2.3.38-40). Every citizen knows that something bad is about to happen, so much so that there is not a man that one can speak to who does not look “full of dread.” The Third Citizen goes on to elaborate on this intuition by saying, “By a divine instinct men’s mind mistrust/ Ensuing danger; as by proof we see/ The water swell before a boist’rous storm” (2.3.42-44). By this he means that men have intuition that tells them when danger is approaching. Through the use of a simile, he compares this knowledge to the sea swelling when a storm is about to ensue. This last section summarizes the entire tone of this scene. It is entirely focused on the citizens’ knowledge of what is happening and intuition that something dangerous is about to occur.
Through the use of language in Act Two, Scene Three of “Richard III,” Shakespeare is able to illustrate that the common people of the country are able to sense danger approaching when Edward IV dies and Richard III begins his rise to power. They are able to sense this danger through their general knowledge and intuition. This can be seen when the citizens discuss the death of Edward IV, the possibility of York taking over the throne, and the power struggle ensuing between Queen Elizabeth and her family and Richard III and his allies. This knowledge and intuition finally culminates in an overall sense that the country will soon be in peril, which the audience knows to be true because of the impending reign of Richard III. This ability to see the impending danger much before it actually occurs proves that the common folk are underestimated and are much wiser than the court believes them to be.
Citizenship bestows upon individuals legal, political and social dimensions. Access to citizenship was illustrated by how membership was determined. Ancient society witnessed the restriction of the access to citizenship as certain groups were not entitled to participate in activities belonging to citizens. The access to citizenship was extended in modern societies. It must be established that the concept of citizenship varies from time to time - ancient citizenship was more about political circles while citizenship in most modern societies rarely involves strongly participatory elements or vigorous democratic practices. In fact, the concept of citizenship is linked closely with political spheres as the rights and liberty of citizens vary with forms of government.
Get original essayArguably, the certain political system could better accommodate the protection of rights and liberties as the core of citizenship than one another. The restriction of the access to citizenship undermines legal political and social standing which form part of citizens’ identity and causes the disparity based on class, gender or ethnicity. Under-representation of the groups will ultimately lead to the failing of state functioning and the loss of stability of the states. While the disparity of access to citizenship served as the dominant factor having an impact on the working of the state, it is exaggerating to claim that it was the sole cause of the failings of the ancient societies. Other key aspects distinct to ancient or modern society as specific forms of challenges also need to be assessed. This essay examines the way in which the state works in the process of providing the access to citizenship and the way legal, political and social elements, with each usually being conceptually inseparable from one another, are attached to the status of citizenship in ancient modern and contemporary era.
The essay will also assess how those elements affect the functioning of the state in a particular polity. Finally, such concepts as globalization, moral universalism and feminism will also be highlighted as they serve to gradually eradicate the limitation to the access to citizenship. Being small-scale communities allowed Greek citizens to forge friendly and trusting relationships with one another. This is essential particularly for building a society in which people have social obligations to conform to rules without the need for the government to resort to the use of force. As social bonding was fostered, citizens would be willing to cooperate with one another in collaborative activities. Small community also had a benefit of easily instilling values from generation to generation through institutions such as schools and families which would be hardly possible for large communities or the republic.
As Aristotle put, appropriate education will lead citizens to have good, dutiful acts. Strong rules and laws in the large community found in modern society might be able to force citizens to abide by the law, yet the citizens might not believe they are morally obliged to conform to it. Nonetheless, Athenian style of democratic citizenship was dependent on the intimacy of a community. Aristotle recognized this limitation when it was pointed out that fostering civic virtues could be practical only in small communities. In this way, living in a tightly knit community would be the only means to achieve a goal of sharing values and common interests and finally social solidarity. Greek model of citizenship was mainly drawn from Athens and Sparta political system with equality as a core principle. In the communities, every citizen was equal before the law and was obliged to treat one another with equal concern. The entitlements as a Greek citizen principally concern political participation. This is in line with Aristotle’s account that ‘human beings are political animals’. According to Aristotle, political participation is the most effective means to achieve a full sense of citizenship where the potential of citizens can be realized during the process of ‘sharing in civic life’. Aristotle’s definition of a citizen as ‘someone who rules and is ruled in turn’ makes citizenship conceptually inseparable from political spheres. Citizenship in ancient societies usually entails the right to engage in political life while non-citizens were underrepresented in the political process due to lack of opportunity to participate in the process.
Citizens in Athens enjoyed the right to directly participate in the Assembly or perform other public duties ranging from meeting for public discussions to performing jury services. Fixed-term duration in political careers served as a tool to ensure that most citizens would have opportunities to participate in political spheres and in practice, the citizens would have a chance to hold public office at a certain point. The Greek idea of citizenship principally involves the subordination of private life to public affairs or ‘common good’. A clear distinction between public and private life was aimed to prevent citizens from seeking self-interest while performing public duties. The non-citizens were at the same time responsible for the private spheres of life of those citizens. The same could be said for citizenship in Sparta which was illustrated in Plutarch’s account of Spartans - citizens should ‘have no desire for a private life, nor knowledge of one, but rather be like bees, always attached to the community, swarming together around their leader and devote themselves entirely to their country. Citizens in Sparta also had to be in charge of protecting the country by doing military service.
Unlike modern citizenship, the access to the citizenship of the Greeks was not unconditional since the citizens were imposed with civilian duties and failure to perform such duties would result in the loss of citizenship. In fact, access to citizenship in ancient society was generally conditional on fulfilling the requirements. Spartans, for instance, had to be able to pay mess dues in order to be incorporated into a body of citizens as well as to maintain their status of citizens. This demonstrates that individuals with financial deficiency could not become citizens in Sparta. The same could be said of Athens citizens – failure to conform to the standards of the common goods would amount to them being removed. In this way, the threat of being deprived of citizenship would force the citizens particularly those in the Assembly not to pursue their own ends. On the contrary, the status of citizenship in modern societies often refer to a set of entitlements which is unconditionally given. It does not necessarily follow that only rights are associated with the status of citizenship, still, duties as in the case of Greek citizenship should not be preconditions of rights.
Clearly, a status of citizenship in Athens and Sparta was more of a duty and it did not come along with any aspects of real rights when compared to that of modern societies. The approach employed in Athens to exercise equal political participation could be regarded as problematic in that citizens did not have a say whether they were willing to participate in public duties. The attitude towards the access to citizenship also concerns how public and private life were balanced. A clear distinction between public and private life was aimed to prevent citizens from seeking self-interest while performing public duties. Nonetheless, those roles being assigned to citizens and non-citizens have been widely criticized as a form of oppression in that they prohibited individuals from choosing their own identities. It appears that the features of ancient Greek model of citizenship symbolize totalitarianism rather than democracy that the Greeks sought to establish and it was not envisaged during that time that a sharp distinction would bring about such disaster. To elaborate on that, lack of free choice and distinction of public and private life led to corruption and conflicts of interests demonstrating that such model of citizenship was not efficient in facilitating the process of political participation. Undoubtedly, the success of Greek democracy was short-lived due to Greek’s flawed view of citizenship. Political powers were placed into the hands of male citizens that could not represent the interests of all groups in the communities. This would be problematic particularly during the process of passing the laws since there was nobody that could speak and act on behalf of the non-citizens. The absence of checks and balances implies the assertion of unlimited authority being vested in the assembly that was dominated by male citizens. It is fair to argue that the root cause could be attributed to the classification of citizens from the beginning.
Clearly, the Greek version of citizenship was not open to all. Citizenship status in both Greece and Rome was exclusive to specific groups of people. The Greek model of citizenship was the privilege of a minority who qualified as citizens - adult males being born to Athenian citizen families, warriors and the masters of the labor. The feature of Greek democracy runs counter to the oppression of the non-citizens where children, slaves, aliens, and women were not included in the list. Similarly, the Romans at first glance adopted the criteria for determining citizen eligibility, stating that Roman citizens had to be native free men who were the legitimate sons of other native free men. It was not until later that the criteria abolished. This is contrary to the idea of liberal democracy in modern societies which attempted to embrace all mature adults in the system. Despite sharing several characteristics with Athens, the Roman model of citizenship has certain striking differences from that of the Greeks. Since the beginning, the Roman Republic aspired to create a classless society and society was the product of the struggle to obtain rights against the aristocrats (patricians).
The agreement between the patricians and the plebeians was reached when it was settled that the officials had to look after the interests of people. The creation of Tribunes of the People with the power resting in the hands of plebeians signifies the process of checks and balances that could better ensure the political equality of citizens. The power of the plebeians included the power to veto the acts or even power to enact the laws, demonstrating a shift towards a society where citizens of all classes not only the wealthy had political power. A concept of legal citizenship was also introduced when the Romans offered ‘dual citizenship’ to the conquered territories. Ineligibility for citizenship usually entailed the absence of rights to participate in political areas. Generally, non-citizens had a duty to take care of citizens’ private life. The introduction of ‘dual citizenship’ as well as ‘semi-citizenship’ made it possible for foreign people to have Roman citizen status in addition to their original citizen status. The citizens of Tusculum, for example, were granted full Roman citizenship while retaining their nationality of origin. At first glance, the access to citizenship appears to be expanded when the status was not restricted to the nationals. In practice, Roman citizenship nonetheless turned out to be a legal status due to no real involvement in self-governance. The entitlements that were derived from the status of citizenship merely refer to the protection by the military and the judiciary.
In fact, Roman citizens did not have the authentic voice in political participation and lacked political influence that was a key element in Greek citizenship. In addition, the bodies that allowed Roman citizens to hold office mostly exercised judicial powers while the ultimate political powers remained with the Senate and Consuls which were the bodies consisting of wealthy landowners. Furthermore, the voting process was largely dominated by the wealthy. As a result, Roman citizens were only granted limited access to the rights being attached to citizenship status. Ultimately, the reluctance of the state to grant active political rights to the majority despite having citizenship status could be implied that the Roman model of citizenship was not a success having been developed from the Greek model.
As a result, the concept of Roman citizenship in spite of having several features that were similar to those of modern societies, still could not achieve in promoting political participation - a core element of representative democracy. This could merely represent the government’s attitude that a citizen is ‘someone who is ruled’ but does not have the right to rule themselves. Citizenship without political participation does not have much impact, meaning that the failing faced in Greek societies would be potentially revisited when political power was not in the hands of the majority and thus could not promote their interests. As a matter of fact, the need to ensure representation is of primary importance for stability in the society.
Overall, democracy in ancient society was artificial with several ranks of citizens in the system which served to undermine its stability in the long term. In fact, Athenian democracy was democratic only amongst those who were citizens in the full sense. Indeed, inequality served to be the main cause of the failings of societies and was behind certain political uprisings. The attitude regarding the access to citizenship could be assessed from the works of ancient philosophers. Plato divided citizenry into three classes - the guardians, the soldiers, and the producers. Despite forming the largest component of citizens, the producers were discouraged from participating in public affairs. Plato further categorized citizens into certain classes by reference to their wealth. The requirement of resources regarding the access to citizenship widened the gap between the wealthy and poorer. This intrinsic faults in the political system could also be seen in Roman citizenship – power was restricted to a handful of elite families rather than the majority of citizens. This is linked to economic inequality that had a massive impact on political rights.
In general, ancient citizenship represents a highly restricted model of citizenship considering that it was a model of gender, race, and class defined citizenship. Although a scope of Roman citizenship was widened, citizens’ right to participate in political affairs was diminished. Citizenship in ancient society scarcely consists of the private life of citizens. In fact, citizens were demanded to sacrifice their entire life to the services of the state. The Roman model of citizenship should not be confused with that of Italian city-states (e.g. Florence) that represented the autonomy of political, executive and judicial powers being independent of the Romans. Still, ancient citizenship lacks an aspect of active citizenship. This is different from modern active citizenship that concerns the idea of standing against the tyranny and inspires a modern revolution.
Modern citizenship was significantly shaped by the 1776 American Revolution and the 1989 French Revolution. It was the first time that the idea of a constitution as a social contract was introduced. In the process, the people would be treated as equals before the law with the right to enter into transactions – buying and selling goods and services. There would be a sovereign political authority having a duty to act on behalf of the citizens by responding to the opinions of citizens. It was also the first time that the idea of the social pact was introduced with the idea that the private ends of the citizens could be met in civil society new feature of the political system that promotes the interests and the access to citizenship is the concept of separation of powers. Placing the ultimate power in the hands of one body or in the hands of the minority contributed to the rising of tyrannies as seen in ancient societies. Dividing powers in several branches Representative democracy brought up certain new aspects of citizenship as the limits of a sizeable citizenry found in ancient communities was eliminated and more were granted a status of citizenship. Obviously, the failings, on the one hand, concern the attitude towards the access to citizenship because... On the other hand, the way rights and obligations were perceived also affects the access to citizenship. Modern citizenship takes into account individuals’ private sphere of life p.105 while the ancient one merely regards ‘the public good’ as a paramount consideration. However, the laws of most modern societies still contained explicit racial, ethnic, gender restrictions. Exclusion from citizenry was determined by discriminatory criteria ranging from gender, nationality and economic status. Modern citizenship particularly Early Modern philosophers did not regard certain groups as citizens. Indeed, women, ethnic minorities, children and the poor were marginalized. According to Hobbe, citizens should be males with high ranking and possessing substantial properties. Rousseau similarly argued that women and the poor would not be eligible as citizens since citizenship should be conditional upon property qualifications and upon the absence of dependence on others. The focus of Locke was also on men as qualified as citizens. Mill proposed the argument that the wiser should have more votes in the process of universal suffrage. It must be stressed that while citizenship is a statement of equality, that equality might be incomplete. Therefore, it is not accurate to claim that Modern citizenship fails to grant access to citizenship merely because the extent of rights as citizens varies with class. This happened in the United States and France after the revolutions as well. In the United States, for instance, black and women were regarded as citizens; still, their citizenship status at first did not have an element of political participation. Lack of the right to participate in the political system means that their opinion will be ignored. This reinforces the argument that racial and gender hierarchies were not yet abolished and still persisted for a period.
Nonetheless, it is not sufficient that all can gain access to citizenship without them being equal as citizenship does not only involve protecting the majority of people at the expense of ‘the few’. It is vivid that Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and Mill believed in the idea of democracy as the path to promote the interests of all citizens. Still, it is paradoxical that they deliberately set out criteria that reflected nothing but inequality. While Mill was the first male philosopher that counted women as equally mature adults as men, his proposed idea of giving votes based on individuals’ ability could not be justified under democracy. The accounts still failed to grant all individual equal right.
Modern societies created a new model of citizenship with a social dimension. Social citizenship right was, according to Marshall, a dimension of the full status of citizenship. Social aspects could be seen as a way to improve citizens’ lives. As it can be seen that ancient citizenship and early modern did not succeed in promoting equality of citizens, this new model of citizenship might better fill the gap of inequality by attempting to solve economic inequality at the first place. The idea is that social integration and social stability can be achieved provided that poverty is eradicated or minimized.
In this sense, both ancient and modern society share pretty much the same notion of citizenship with the restriction of certain groups from the citizenry. It is obvious that citizenship, particularly in ancient time, did not bring about basic rights (for example right to vote, right to make contracts and right not to be subject to torture) for individuals nor could it secure fairness in the society. Athens developed a form of democracy yet it failed to grant equal power to all individuals since only a highly exclusive group of men could have political power. Both ancient and Modern citizenship still could not afford to sufficiently accommodate for certain groups’ representation in the society. Women, ethnic minorities and the poor were generally excluded from citizenry during the early modern period. The requirement concerning wealth, knowledge in ancient societies illustrates that not all individuals are eligible for such status. Aristotle’s exclusion of the poor from citizenry It must be stressed that Athen’s direct democracy is a separate matter from citizenship and therefore the need for the educated in democratic process does not justify the restriction of slaves, women in such process. The works of most notable philosophers including Rousseau and Locke share male-dominated model of citizenship. It was noted from the outset of Locke’s concept of citizenship in a modern world that the individuals being regarded as citizens were men. The same male-dominated account applies to the argument of Hobbes and Rousseau. A new direction of citizenshipIndeed, the conception of citizenship is usually based on the relationship between the individuals and the territorial state. Both Athenian and Spartiate mode of citizenship was strained by territory. According to Plutarch, citizens were not permitted to be away from the city for fear that the imposed norms and values could be tainted by citizens acquiring foreign standards of living. The emergence of new states, transnational patterns serves as challenges to the concept of ‘citizenship as nationality’ and calls for the expansion of the scope of citizenship. Membership of the European Union creates a new identity in addition to that of EU citizen’s notion of originality. However, the status is based on border criteria. The Brexit vote signifies the challenge to this concept because the additional status of EU citizens could potentially be removed. Nationality model of citizenship has been criticized as a status of citizens should be ‘relevant to individuals irrespective of their particular histories, cultures and specific experiences’. Having a status as world citizens is arguably a step towards a peaceful society where every citizen feel they are part of the society.
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Get custom essayCitizenship in modern societies is different ... but in some fundamental regards, the idea of citizenship remains what it has long been from an ancient society. Greek and Roman share certain aspects of citizenship that the government was not prepared to give basic political, legal and social rights to citizens. Arguably, ancient society regarded civic activism as potentially disruptive as it would threaten public order if individuals were commonly granted access to citizenship. However, it must be noted that forms of challenge varied from one society to another. The challenge to the ancient societies was military-related, forcing the rulers to put a great emphasis on the protection of the state and negatively affected citizen standing. Modern and contemporary model of citizenship is challenged by Cosmopolitanism which renders the idea of access to citizenship within nation-states problematic. The status of world citizen encourages individuals to take global moral responsibilities and conform to universalistic moral commitments by helping other strangers who do not share geographical territory with one another. In fact, citizenship should not be regarded as a privilege that excludes certain groups from having representation. The contemporary account of the access to citizenship is that individuals can be citizens in a variety of groups with certain degrees of generality. It might be true that strong feelings of shared belonging facilitate solidarity; still, national and cultural belonging should not be seen as the only way to achieve group solidarity.
Contemporary development approaches perceive civic engagement as one of the key ingredients for poverty reduction. Effort to stimulate community development through participation is to address the increasing poverty and disempowerment that accompanied the modernistic development discourse. The intention of civic engagement in development policy and practice is to promote the active engagement of individuals working in collectives to change problematic conditions as well as influence policies and programs that affect the quality of their lives or the lives of others. The concept of civic engagement is used in policy circles and in this essay is defined how civic engagement can reduce poverty.
Get original essayThe word ‘poverty’ derives from French word ‘pauvre’ meaning poor. Poverty means not having enough money for basic needs such as food, water, shelter or toilets. It means the state of lacking material possessions of having little or no means to support oneself.
Civic engagement is assumed in policy circles as the main channel for the active involvement of community members in shaping the outcomes of the development projects. For Kaufman and Alfonso, effective civic engagement may lead to social and personal empowerment, economic development, and socio-political transformation. The potential of civic engagement in reversing power relations and providing the poor with agency and voice is well noted in the development literature. As such most development projects are expected to have some modicum of civic engagement revealing the widespread appeal for civic engagement in contemporary development thinking and practice.
Civic engagement is a widely used concept in development policy and practice. Civic engagement in development practice puts emphasis on getting community members involved in the entire planning process from project initiation to closure. Structures of civic engagement create social capital for community engagement as well as motivate people to get involved in the affairs of their communities. The role of community members in shaping the outcomes of development projects is critical for the success of development intervention and possibly for poverty reduction.
Civic engagement has featured very prominently in development is poverty reduction and rural development. Cornwall and Coehlo writes that the concepts of participation and poverty reduction carry the allure of optimism and purpose and has shaped development discourse and policy for some time now. A growing body of evidence confirms Cornwall and Brook assertion that civic engagement in development projects leads to poverty reduction and sustainable development. Specifically, civic engagement empowers the poor by building their capacity through skills training to actively engage with the development process. Active empowerment in community activities often leads to the empowerment of local community members.
Participation and empowerment are mutually reinforcing. For Labonté and Laverack, empowerment is the process by which people gain control over the factors and decisions that shape their lives. The empowering effects of civic engagement in poverty reduction manifest at the individual and collective levels. At the individual level, giving people the knowledge, skills and confidence to address their own needs and advocate on their own behalf improves their capacity for collective. Participation in collective action gives individuals the resources to exercise agency through voice. Empowering people through capacity building increases the likelihood of their participation in community activities. Increased levels of empowerment allow the community to have influence over things that matter and obtain power over decisions, enabling them to move from powerless non-participants to active and effective citizens. Community empowerment goes beyond consultation and information sharing and offers the possibility for active involvement in the decision-making process.
In conclusion, civic engagement is an important tool in the fight against poverty. It can increase access to resources and services, build social networks and community cohesion, and promote policies and programs that can help to reduce poverty. Encouraging and empowering citizens to be active in their communities can have a significant impact on improving the well-being of individuals and communities.
Engineering is the application of scientific knowledge and mathematical methods to practical purposes of the design, construction or operation of structures, machines, or systems. The discipline of engineering encompasses a range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application. The specific types or applications of Engineering is Computer, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil, Environmental, chemical. naming just a few. The engineering applications that I will be focusing is civil.
Get original essayThe history of engineering has been apart of life since the beginnings of humans. The earliest days of civil engineering can be traced back to 4000 and 2000 BC in ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization, and Mesopotamia when humans started to abandon a nomadic lifestyle, creating a need for the construction of the shelter. The construction of pyramids in Egypt (circa 2700–2500 BC) were some of the first instances of large structure constructions. other ancient historic civil engineering constructions include Parthenon by Iktinos in Ancient Greece (447–438 BC), the Appian Way by Roman engineers (c. 312 BC), the Great Wall of China.
Civil engineering is the oldest of the main branches of engineering. Civil engineers use their knowledge to supervise and plan construction projects such as roads, airports, bridges, canals, tunnels, and wastewater systems. They also collaborate with architects to design and construct various types of buildings. Some other civil engineering endeavours include highways, airports, pipelines, railroads, levees, and irrigation and sewage systems. Civil engineers try to design their structures to be functional, efficient and durable. Most of the projects civil engineers are involved with having an impact on the environment. They use their knowledge of the environment to create structures that are not harmful.
The civil engineering profession has an exceptional opening to create a progression of change that will progress and sustain the environment and our planet in the long term. These are the very actions that make civil engineering a distinctive and very important profession for our planet and for our lives. There have been several projects around the world, which are known to be the most sustainable building in the 21st century. Their design, development, use of material and the construction is processed and analysed so careful and that they have managed to come out with the successful result in all of the following projects. They are known to be the environmentally friendly and economically friendly too.
Design sustainability is not an easy route as it must be applied in every design theory. Starting from the conception of the design and moving to the location, the structural materials, the structural methods and finally the possible demolition of the project, design sustainability has to be applied in many areas. On the other hand, sustainable construction must aim to use less natural materials and materials which are dangerous to the environment, also less energy to cut the amount of the waste and reduce the environmental pollution without negotiating the quality of the project. Sustainable thinking, planning and acting must be involved in civil engineering to reduce the environmental effecting projects have over their whole design life. Only in the course of this process, and by implementing sustainable thinking at every phase of a project, can a set of ideologies to improve the quality of life be created.
The economic component of sustainability has been the main driver of projects. As civil engineering considering the sustainability issues, we need to consider more than today alone. It is vital to account for cost over a whole life cycle and the impact on the future development. These costs must be considered in tandem with the social consequences and environmental impacts.
The Syrian Civil war has been an ongoing battle between government, civilians, and terrorist organizations dating back to March 15, 2011. Due to the overwhelming loss of lives on all three fields we have seen many countries join in to help they side they believe is right. Many of these countries that decide to join actually put the civilians at greater risk as they decide to help the Syrian government who have been known to put the war first and innocent casualties second. Through the use of chemical weapons, airstrikes, and planted landmines Syrian refugees have found it harder to be safe in their homeland. Though Russia and Turkey are both helping to reclaim Syria, their efforts are affecting the lives of civilians.
Get original essayThere are many reasons as to why the Syrian Civil war has become what is is today, but for the most part it has started due to the lack of freedom in a democratic country. “Unemployment, widespread corruption, a lack of political freedom and state repression” (“Why is there a war in Syria?”, BBC NEWS). In 2011 there was protest by the citizens to have one of two things happen a better outlook on what freedom really is or a new President to lead the country. From here everything started to go downhill as President Bashar al-Assad treated these protestors as terrorist and used whatever means were necessary to squash their movement. Protesters of course did not back down, only using this excessive force as ammunition for their cause and now only giving one option to the president, resign. In the government's eyes anyone that doesn’t agree with them is a terrorist.
Russia and Turkey have had a rocky relationship for the past few years starting ever since Turkey shot down an SU-24 attack aircraft back in 2015. Since that incident Russia has created tariffs on the import and export of Turkish products, leaving Turkey with a horrible economic flux. Even as all of this happened they still found time to eventually make amends and work together to complete a common goal.
These two nations do still have disagreements, but they hide them beneath a friendly exterior in order to get what they want. Russia wants to help Syria for a variety of reasons from an increased sales of Russian arms to other nations to keeping strategic resources like their airbase located near Latakia. With that Turkey wants Russia’s help for only one reason, being scared of failure. One of the first pushes into Syria by Turkish soldiers lead to disappointment as they were forced to run and hide due to the strength of ISIS in Al-Bab. The Turkish President Erdogan has never been able to recover from that humiliation so instead of trying once again he instead joined forces.
Russia and Turkey working together is known as the first joint airstrike of its time as we have a N.A.T.O member working with a N.A.T.O rejecter. In order to remove terrorist organizations these two nations have been using an age old motto “Go big or go home.” Through this joint partnership we have seen one of the largest airstrike raids to hit Syria with 17 large bombers entering Syrian airspace. The use of 17 aircrafts seems to be effective as in two weeks of work they were able to destroy 36 targets.
These two countries working together will of course create a stronger bond, but it also makes other countries scared of the future. Turkey is looking to leave N.A.T.O as it was ignored and denied help by other members in the Syrian problem. The cause of concern with this entire ideal is that Turkey was our ally, but it is slowly getting manipulated by Russia. Russia helped Turkey in a time of need and despair, we didn’t so in President Erdogan eyes our enemy is more faithful and trustworthy than us.
Even though many of the civilians are terrorists in the eyes of the government there are actual terrorist organizations fighting to take over Syria. Isis is the major group located in Syria, taking over as much land as they can in order to expand their empire. Isis started as a small western hate group, but slowly grew to consume half of Syria and Iraq. The leaders of this group realized that the faster they could grow their owned land the faster they can gain members and the less of a chance their is for their cause to die off. The group has adapted enough to work in the larger cities of Syria, surrounding themselves with civilians in order to make it harder for nations to come in and remove them. The more innocents in a city the better as it allows Isis to take hostages and boosting their survivability.
The airstrikes, although they may have helped push back Isis in some encampments, has also killed many innocent civilians. “A total of 206,923 civilians were killed in this war. 190,723 of which were killed by Syrian forces and 4,102 by Russian troops” (Syrian Network for Human Rights). To put that into perspective all the believed terrorist organizations have killed a total of 8,279 civilians. That means the Syrian government has killed 23 times more innocent citizens then all four terrorist orgs put together. These civilians are getting the short end of the stick as even the things that are suppose to be helping are still hurting them. Russia kills about 9,364 civilians annually due to airstrikes alone (“Syria's war: Russian air raids kill 9,400 in one year”, Aljazeera).
Life in Syria has become more violent and hostile within the years of war. No one has had it harder than the civilians stuck in their small towns between terrorist orgs and the government's army. Almost daily these innocent people need to move out of their homes into fields to stay safe as army tanks roam the city. Even through this walk many of the people aren’t safe, at least 10 people have died due to placed landmines. The casualties and lack of funding has forced all medical personnel to evacuate Syria, meaning that anyone that is sick or injured will have to visit one of 13 overcrowded, makeshift clinics.
Even through all of this they have faith in God and hope for the future, often praying to him in hopes not to be killed. Though this is obviously not the case as an estimated 18,000 civilians have died due to airstrike bombs alone. In Aleppo the citizens have to stay vigilant as their own government drops shrapnel-packed barrel bombs that have taken 450 lives this month alone. They are trapped in a never ending battle for the most part as the Syrian Government has created blockades to leave or enter the city meaning that the civilians had to create tunnels just to smuggle in supplies. Even the tunnels are often found and people are forced out with the use of different forms of chemical weapons tossed in. Eventually through these tunnels the chemical seeps out and into the city, sickening or killing anyone in the vicinity as it escapes.
Though we have countries ready to fight for freedom and combat terrorism, they seem to forget that there are also innocents on the battlefield. People tend to use the excuse “Their lives for the lives of many more” too liberally and don’t stop to think about how one airstrike could wipe out an entire city worth of people. Syrian civilians know this all too well as they have lived through the never ending cycle of war, creeping around every corner just to make it by. Even now as we see more of what our actions are causing we don’t seem to take in the full effect and instead minimize the growing atrocity that we continue to face. Everyday Syrian civilians are forced out of their homes and into abandoned areas of town in order to try and live another day. The constant movement of these individuals means that they will never know anything about safety and security, they only known what life is like when not even your country cares about you.
While Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, chivalric romance by Pearl Poet, might seem as no more than a tale about heroic quest of the noble knight, an observant reader would notice a number of deeper issues discussed in this work. Perhaps the most curious question raised in the poem is Pearl Poet’s criticism of the unrealistic values of the dwellers of Camelot. The author shows gentle criticism of the obsession with appearance and implies that in the final battle between nature and nurture even the most selfless aspirations for the elevated ideas do not overweight simple needs of the human nature. This struggle between natural impulses and endeavor for the greater good is represented by a charming metaphor of the conflict between pagan beliefs and Christian moral standards. At the same time, the poet does not dismiss derived from religion values but insists that despite their greatest efforts people are still children of the Nature and should understand, accept, and remember that.
Get original essayThroughout the poem Pearl Poet criticizes the widespread overvaluation of appearance and glamour over truth and action. During Christmas feast the pompous charm of the court is dimmed by the overpowering light of the Green Knight. For example, at the start of the poem the inhabitants of the Camelot are described as ideals of prestige, manners, and appearance, “The halls and chambers were heaped with happy lords and ladies as high as you like! There they were gathered with all the world's goodness: knights as kind as Christ himself, ladies as lovely as ever have lived, and the noblest king our nation has known. They were yet in their pride, in the prime of their youth, and filled as full of heaven's blessing as the king had strength of will. And mighty men surpassing all were gathered on that hill” (alliteration. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 February 2016). The detailed description of lavish meals, chosen guests, and merriment stops at its pinnacle with the sudden appearance of the Green Knight, who brings contrast to the conventional glamour with which the poem started. The newcomer uses simple words to convey his intentions and show some contempt for the social convention of the court, “I've a mind to see his face and would fancy a chat with the fellow who wears the crown” (alliteration. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 February 2016). Despite knights’ and ladies’ remarkable characteristics the appearance of the Priest of the Green Chapel leaves them abashed, “A silence fell filling that rich hall as if they'd all fainted or suddenly slept: their voices just vanished at their height” (alliteration. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 February 2016) The pretentious glamour of the dwellers of the Camelot is literally dimmed with the “natural” light of the Green Knight, ‘’He looked a lightning flash, they say: he seemed so bright; and who would dare to clash in melee with such might?’ (alliteration. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 February 2016) In this scene, obsessed with appearance and luxury Camelot surrenders for honest and realistic outlook represented by the Green Knight.
Excessive emphasis on the appearance is also shown in the attitude of the noble guests of the castle. While the Green Knight, during his visit to the Christmas feast, tries to provoke the merri makers for an open conversation, they prefer to preserve their image, “Some, I suppose, were not floored, but chose to be polite, letting their leader and lord be first to speak to that knight” (alliteration. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 February 2016). However, right after the departure of Sir Gawain, “All that saw him so splendid sighed deep within and whispered soft words one to another in compassion for that prince: "By Christ, what a pity, to lose such a leader, whose life is so noble! There is hardly his equal anywhere on earth! A wary approach would have been wiser; better to have made such a man a duke -- such a brilliant leader” (alliteration. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 February 2016). While taking great care to look courteous, brave, and compassionate, those people let “the best in the land” to risk his life and show regret only after being safe from taking his place. This way, the author shows scorn for the dominance of the manners over true feelings and actions.
The main point Pearl Poet raises in his romance is the falseness of the believe in the infinite power of human motivation and effort. To better illustrate this point, the poet contrasts refined dwellers of the castle with the Priest of the Green Chapel to parallel elevated Christian values with humble pre Christian beliefs. During the Christmas feast The Green Knight seems to appear only to disrupt the well-established and renowned Christian event and, perhaps, the well-established and dear held ideas of the people of Camelot. This difference between the green-skinned stranger and elegant members of the court serves not to just contrast the newcomer with the rest of the guests but to parallel two sets of conflicting values better described as pre Christian believes based in acceptance of human nature and simple worldview with Christian well-defined more sophisticated codes of behavior. The Green Knight’s remarkable strength, powers perceived as magical cause subsequent quests’ abashment and show domination of the critical outlook over the popular one. Despite their remarkable characteristics, the ladies and knights look inferior to the priest of the Green Chapel, the representation of author's thought, which supports the idea that even the most outstanding among people are victims to their natural weaknesses.
Pearl Poet uses final events of the poem to further criticize the excessive believe in the exalted ideas that force people to take futile attempts to ignore their limitations. The most noble among king’s servants, Sir Gawain, aspires to meet unrealistic moral standards only to learn that even the finest among the people is not flawless. After leaving Camelot, that represents the Christian, more sophisticated worldview, Sir Gawain faces the real world and for the first time feels the limitations the Nature placed on the living. The noble knight faces hunger, cold, and tiredness before losing in the final battle with the strongest of his weaknesses. Sir Gawain flinches under the blow of the Green Knight and forced to forever wear a mark that represents his humane origin, ‘He grieved when he had to tell; He groaned for grief and ill fame; In his face the blood did up well, When he showed the nick, for shame’ (alliteration. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 February 2016). And while the protagonist even at the end of the poem fails to understand the lesson of the Green Knight, readers should learn not to be ashamed of the natural limits of their bodies and souls.
In the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Pearl Poet criticizes the excessive value placed on appearance, artificial norms, and futile attempts to completely ignore natural limitations. To better illustrate his point, the author takes advantage of the metaphorical images of the Camelot and the Green Knight. While aspiring to meet chivalrous moral standards Sir Gawain learns that even the finest of the people is capable of error. Therefore, Pearl Poet reminds readers about the importance of acceptance of their personal weakness and living according to the real values.
Since feudal times, class has played a distinctly formative role within social structure in England. Whether a person resided within the upper class, middle class, or lower class could determine political influence, economic success, and social freedoms alike. In early novels, characters were expected to follow these cleanly cut societal rules in a way that mimicked a perfect class ruled pseudo-reality. This meant carefully adhering to the expectations of the class and acting in a way that did not overstep the boundaries set in place. In some ways, this adherence to societal norms created specific archetypes which minimized realism, as 1700’s European society contained many individuals leading vastly contradictory double lives. If unacknowledged, this could cause a failure on the author’s part to produce novelistic characters who feel true to life in a modern sense. Truly realistic characters are produced from a balance of rejection and submission to the expectations of class, and attention to how these rejections and submissions affect the character’s perception of the world he or she exists in. Critically considering how this balance affects the character’s actions and interactions can uncover a complexity not clearly seen upon first glance.
Get original essayThe novel Fantomina by Eliza Haywood begins to discuss this dynamic of social status rejection playing a role in characterization. Presented as a lady, Fantomina begins the novel dressing herself as a prostitute and venturing to a show unaccompanied to garner the attention of a man she had seen about. The readers are unsure what motivates her to do this, but can infer that oftentimes humans want what they cannot obtain—other walks of life seem quite appealing from the other side. Fantomina is young, curious about how the other half lives, and naturally fascinated by the male gaze and attention a prostitute receives for her favors. With this in mind, Fantomina does not fully understand the expectations of a prostitute and the freedoms she relinquishes in order to receive this type of attention. At one point, Haywood states that Fantomina “rejoic’d to think she had taken that Precaution of providing herself with a Lodging, to which she thought she might invite him, without running any Risque, either of her Virtue or Reputation” (Haywood 45). Here, Fantomina still believes she can save her honor, or her virginity as women of a higher class understand honor as, from a man who believes it is her profession to offer him pleasure for a price.
Her adherence to the role of a lady, even when dressed as a prostitute, shows realism and develops a character paradox, which in turn creates an underlying complexity. Her true character, whether motivated by social standing or an intrinsic moral system is deeply torn between want for affection, courtship, and love but not wanting to lose her honor and regress to the treatment of a common prostitute. Beauplaisir “believ’d her a Mistress” and based his interactions and expectation of her off of that fact, only concerning himself with the thought that she “would be much more Expensive than at first he had expected” due to her wit and seemingly intelligent demeanor (Haywood 45). Overall, by playing prostitute, Fantomina loses some of what societally makes her a lady, creating another layer to her fascinating persona. She is both a fallen women and a perfectly preserved lady because the persona of Fantomina offers her a concealed identity which in turn awards her freedom from responsibility for her sexual promiscuities.
While Fantomina’s social fluidity aids in creating an interesting internal conflict, Gulliver’s distance from social structure due to his travels within Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift enables him to see the barbaric and sordid nature of humans, thus adding complexity and interiority to his character. The satirical elements implemented within Gulliver’s Travels establishes the greatest difference between the two works, so the realism of the characters is not really comparable in a traditional sense. However, both of these characters gain character intricacy due to their rejections of social constraints. Analyzing Gulliver at the beginning of the work, he represents middle class consumerism and social privilege. Swift establishes Gulliver in the very beginning as a well educated middle class man from good family lineage. Despite this information’s relative randomness, it establishes a clear voice and creates a kind of false credibility due to his higher social ranking.
Like Fantomina to a certain extent, and most certainly Moll Flanders within Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, Gulliver concerns himself a great deal with material possessions. Oftentimes he attempts to trade money for things such as protection (like when in Brobdignag) and grows thoroughly confused when the giant holds it to no special value. Gulliver “took a Purse of Gold” from his pocket and “humbly presented it to him” then continued to do this even after the Brobdignagian seemed to have no understanding of the items Gulliver presented (Swift 74). This shows Gulliver believes that money holds some type of intrinsic value beyond purchase of material goods and services, as if money could bring peace or happiness, a distinctly consumerist idea. Even in Lilliput, Gulliver perfectly logs each possession the Lilliputians take from him upon his landing on the island, and brags about his ability to keep some of the items by asserting he had “one private Pocket which escaped their search” (Swift 31). This consumerist nature is displayed again when Gulliver is offered an official title within Lilliput, increasing his ranking and social standing.
During Gulliver’s time in Lilliput, he grows very little as a character. He stays within the mold of a bumbling middleclass man gaining the prestige he thought he earned by birth, questioning very little, and adhering stringently to code. It is not until the very end of his time with the Brobdignagians and his time with the Houyhnhhnm people that he begins to gain insight into human nature’s pettiness, thus gaining awareness pertaining to himself and gaining complexity and interiority. It is in Houyhnhnm that he realizes the incompetency of human nature. Gulliver states that he “had neither the Strength or Agility of a common Yahoo” and “could neither run with Speed, no climb Trees” and that “Yahoos were known to hate one another more than they did any different Species of Animals” (Swift 219). This recollection knocks Gulliver from the high pedestal he sits upon in Lilliput down to the lowest scum of the Earth. He does not even have the practical characteristics of a Yahoo that provide means of protection and functionality. Instead, he realizes humanity’s capability for destruction, ascribing mankind with the capability to cause Civil War. Gulliver’s master also states that “There was nothing that rendered the Yahoos more odious, than their undistinguishing Appetite to devour every Thing that came in their way” which displays the massive need for humans to consume goods just for the sake of consumption (Swift 220). Here, Gulliver realizes his mediocrity and ignorance and materialism. Here, he gains insight and can no longer adhere to the societal norms set in place to constrict him. Gulliver has the capacity to change: to grow aware and have a very physical reaction due to that awareness. This consciousness places him on a higher level of believability as a character and forces him to break from the archetypal bumbling middle class man stumbling through adventures blindly.
Though Fantomina and Gulliver’s Travels explore the concept of class relating to interiority in different ways, they both explore it in a way that makes them more complex, novelistic characters. Fantomina simultaneously wears the hat of a lady and a prostitute, but is held to the societal norms present within a prostitute/gentleman interaction. This interaction and many others existing within the novel cultivate internal conflict between the morals taught to her as a young lady and her want for the attention and affection of Beauplaisir. Whether this want stems from his ability to afford her stability or because he took what she deems valuable (her virginity), it causes her to question herself and scheme accordingly. This leaves readers questioning what characteristics the real Fantomina possesses, and if she is truly clever enough to outwit and trap Beauplaisir within her feminine clutches. We only see faint glimpses of her true identity later in the book, (mostly through letters) as she begins to rely more upon her different identities.
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Get custom essayGulliver begins his journey so sure of himself and his station within society. He checks all his boxes in the introduction, offering the readers enough information to foster trust of character and assure that he feeds into the societal norms of the time. It isn’t until after several formative experiences that he is able to shake away the rosy glasses and understand more deeply the faults within human nature, within class, and within political structures contemporary to his own society: heavy topics that only a intrinsically interesting character could begin to contemplate. So, despite the societal expectations affecting each character quite differently, both are left struggling with internal strife from experiences that made them question their own identity: an identity deeply constructed by birth and common luck.
While the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen does not openly display Marx's idea of the oppressed and the oppressor, it does clearly demonstrate Marx's ideas of society as a history of class struggle. Austen portrays class divisions and struggles through the relationships between the characters in the novel, chiefly the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth. When subjected to a Marxist reading, Pride and Prejudice reflects how relationships were determined by wealth and class status in pre-industrial England. Subsequently the novel also displays the emergence of the bourgeoisie (the Gardiners) and how they affect class relations.
Get original essayAlthough Pride and Prejudice was written before the bourgeoisie become the dominant class of the western world, the industrial revolution had already begun and so had the emergence of this social class. Therefore the principle of personal worth being decided by 'exchange value' (p. 82 The Communist Manifesto) can still be read in the novel and Marx's criticism of the bourgeoisie can still be applied. It was obvious from the novel's orientation that relationships were determined by a character's 'exchange value' or in other words, their wealth and social position. This was overtly present in relationships between men and women in 18th Century England. The novel's opening lines set the criteria for future relationships: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife'. This line implied two central concepts, the first that Mr Bingley is only an acceptable husband as a result of his fortune. Secondly, women were expected to marry a wealthy man who could provide for them until death. Mrs Bennet, with five eligible daughters of marrying age, desired that all marry as 'highly' as possible because the girls would not inherit any money from the family. When it first becomes clear that Mr Bingley has purchased Netherfield Estate he is immediately categorised as a potential husband for the Bennet girls. Mrs Bennet says of Bingley 'A single man of a large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls'. Clearly his worth (at least initially) was monetary rather than based on upstanding personal traits or reputation.
It's apparent that a man's personal fortune largely dictated how a community accepted him. Even the men of the town viewed Mr Bingley as a gentleman due to his wealth as they spoke highly of him. However, as soon as the wealthier Mr Darcy was introduced the praise and admiration was bestowed on him:
'Mr Darcy soon drew the attention of the room...by his noble mien; and the report...of his having ten thousand a year...the gentlemen pronounce him to be a fine figure of a man'
From the first introduction of Mr Darcy to the other characters (and the reader) he was seen as the ideal man and husband due to his fortune. Even though his character was denounced soon after this introduction (for lack of manners) he was still primarily judged by his material possessions 'not all his large estate in Derbyshire could save him'. However, it was 'his large estate in Derbyshire' that did save him in the novel. It was upon Elizabeth's visit to Darcy's estate (after her rejection of his marriage proposal) that she began to change her mind about his character and their relationship, as it states ' "And of this place" thought she " I might have been mistress!". One might make the assumption that Darcy and Elizabeth's union by novel's conclusion reinforces that his wealth was important and that his pride was not sufficient in alienating him from the rest of the community. In fact his pride was a result of his large fortune and Elizabeth came to understand and forgive his pride.
Of course, social positioning was just as important as wealth and most of the time the two came hand in hand. Darcy belonged to the aristocrats and thus had considerable social power and influence while Elizabeth belonged to a class below (landed gentry), resulting in conflict between the two characters. Darcy's rejection of Elizabeth upon their first encounter (due to her class) was an example of the struggle between classes. Darcy had several reasons to reject Elizabeth, namely her own social position, that her uncle made his money rather than inherited it (an example of the emerging bourgeoisie) and that her family did not behave accordingly:
'The situation of your mother's family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison of the total want of propriety... by your three younger sisters'
In the novel's context, English society did not believe in transgressing classes; it was expected that one would remain in the class they were born into. This was represented in Pride and Prejudice through Miss Bingley's objection to Jane and Bingley's union, and Lady Catherine's objection to the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy. Lady Catherine's anger at this possible social faux pas can be seen through her conversation with Elizabeth on page 365: 'Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never be mentioned by any of [Darcy' family and friends]'. Lady Catherine is not only incensed by Darcy's love of Elizabeth but equally by the subsequent rejection of his cousin 'Are you lost to every feeling of propriety and delicacy...from the [Darcy's] earliest hours he was destined for his cousin'. This statement reinforces how class transition was frowned upon and hence it was a disgrace if one was to marry below their class.
On the other hand, if one continues a Marxist reading, Darcy's acceptance of Elizabeth and her family demonstrates Marx's hypothesis that as the dominant class begins losing its social dominance it must align itself with the emerging class; in this case the bourgeoisie. As Marx stated on page 91 of The Communist Manifesto:
'A small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary class...just as a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie'
In Pride and Prejudice Darcy can represent the 'section of nobility' that went over to the bourgeoisie, while the bourgeoisie are represented by the Gardiners. After Darcy's original dislike of the Gardiners he comes to accept them: 'his being now seeking the acquaintance of some of those very people, against whom his pride revolted'. Darcy's acceptance of the Gardiners can be read as an example of the bourgeois revolution Marx discussed in The Communist Manifesto (p. 91). Darcy can also represent the disappearing nobility in pre-industrial England and the changes that took place within that class in order to survive the industrial (and as Marx saw it, bourgeois) revolution. Effectively this is demonstrated by his acceptance for Elizabeth's family and his willingness to marry for love rather than to cement his own social standing.
Although Pride and Prejudice was written before Marx's manifesto one can clearly see evidence of his theories regarding class struggle as the 'history of all hitherto in society'. Employing Marx's ideas one can suggest that Darcy and Elizabeth (as the novel's protagonists) demonstrate Marx's ideas regarding class struggle, wealth as personal worth and the acceptance of other classes in order to survive. Whilst to many Pride and Prejudice might be read as a romance, it was also a critique of the world Austen constructed in the novel. Thus, it is a novel that displays the class struggles Marx believed existed throughout history.
Rudyard Kipling was regarded by his peers as a fine satirist. Many of the leading wits of his day, including Mark Twain, met him in person and acknowledged him as a peer. One of the things Kipling subtly criticized through his poetry was the traditional association of higher class with superior knowledge. This essay will examine Gunga Din, Tommy, and Gentlemen-Rankers to show how Kipling inverts the class hierarchy by presenting a character at or near the bottom of the human social ladder as having a superior level of insight, enlightenment, or basic human decency relative to those who are conventionally regarded as being “above” him. Kipling does not present the irony overtly and relies on specific literary techniques to accomplish it. This essay will present examples of the techniques Kipling uses to establish and then undermine conventional class assumptions.
Get original essayIn all three poems, Kipling begins by letting his readers know who is speaking. He does this by narrating in the first person singular and by altering conventional English spelling to reflect the speaker’s accent. This is not a technique unique to Kipling; Dickens used it also in Oliver Twist. When the text is read aloud exactly as it is written, the accent sends a very clear signal to the contemporary reader about the speaker’s class and origins. The reader therefore fills in some unwritten assumptions about the speaker’s education, life experiences, and future prospects. Since Kipling’s time the English language has mutated, and entirely new dialects have developed that are so distinct from one another as to be mutually unintelligible. It is therefore necessary to interpret Kipling’s implied pronunciation and etymology according to the conventions of his times.
In Gunga Din and Tommy, Kipling’s narrator drops the terminal “f”, “g”, and “d” along with many “h” sounds and adjusts the pronunciation of words like “half” and “get”. This is consistent with the Cockney dialect of English which originated in London. So the narrators of Gunga Din and Tommy were not born in India like Kipling himself, nor are they from Scotland, Ireland , nor is he from Scotland or Ireland. Furthermore, they do not have the cultured speech and grammatical precision of the gentleman narrator in Gentlemen-Rankers, who pronounces every letter. So, in the very first line of each poem Kipling establishes the speaker’s origin and hereditary social status. Along with the class signal go some assumptions about the speaker’s life experiences and level of education. All three of the narrators are military men, but their locations and perspectives differ greatly.
Gunga Din tells the story of a former British soldier’s interaction with the regimental bhisti or water-bearer while serving in India during Queen Victoria’s era. The eponymous water-bearer, wearing nothing more than a loincloth and a goatskin water-bag, would run back and forth behind the lines supplying thirsty British troops with water. This was an essential service throughout history especially in India, where the heat and humidity can become so oppressive as to require people to drink more than five liters of water per day even when they are not exerting themselves. The Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-muskets used by most of the British troops in the middle of the 19th century had been mostly phased out and replaced by breech-loading Snider Enfield rifles starting in 1866 and Martini-Henry rifles in the mid-1870’s.
Since Kipling was born in 1865, by the time he was able to observe and understand the things and people around him, soldiers no longer had to tear gunpowder cartridges open with their teeth. But the smoke from the gunpowder charges was still a very strong desiccant, so a man who repeatedly fired his rifle would invariably develop a dry mouth. A dry mouth is also a physiological stress response, and since being shot at is stressful, even a soldier who is not breathing gunpowder smoke eventually empties his or her canteen. He or she cannot leave his or her position to get more water without giving up a tactical advantage. Hence the need for water resupply and the regimental bhisti.
Another of Kipling’s strategies to depict a character quickly but vividly is to use a keyword to quickly establish location, time, and setting without the need for lengthy description. The keyword might be an allusion to a specific time or place, or it might carry cultural connotations. The speaker in Gunga Din makes use of the word bhisti, meaning “water-bearer”, however the word has a historical and cultural context.
The Bhisti people are a endogamous community in northern India. They speak Urdu, using the Persian-Arabic script, but are conversant with whatever language is predominant in the region they live. In the present day they can be found in several of India’s major cities working in various professions and trades. Some still carry water for a living. However in Kipling’s day the need for manual water transport was far more urgent, and military water-bearers traveled wherever the regiment did.
Kipling, who was born in India and who returned there as an adult, had an intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of India and its people. Living and working as he did in northern India and in the territory that eventually became Pakistan, Kipling associated with all manner of people in different castes and classes particularly through his military acquaintances and his Masonic connections. Kipling’s first language was Hindi, which is related to Urdu but not identical, although he learned English early and wrote primarily in that tongue. Living as he did in northern India he could not have avoided crossing paths with at least a few ethnic Bhisti, and he had the language skills to speak with them.
According to Bhisti history, the Bhisti were originally of the Rajput Hindu warrior caste. Like many groups within a given caste, they developed a professional specialty over the generations: bringing water to thirsty soldiers. At some point the majority of the Bhisti people accepted Islam, however their career specialty had by this time been elevated to a cultural commitment. Many Bhisti elected to serve whatever soldiers they could find, including the European armies from France and Britain that were fighting for political and economic control of the Indian subcontinent. In Kipling’s era, there was an urgent and constant need for water on the front lines, so each regiment needed at least one designated water-carrier, and the Bhisti people were so successful in this role that their name, lacking its first capital letter, became synonymous with the role of water-carrier. Hence the “regimental bhisti, Gunga Din”. With one word—just one—Kipling establishes Gunga Din as a man who carries water not just as a vocation but as an avocation.
Another technique Kipling uses throughout his writing is pejorative or derogatory language directed by one person toward another to establish differences in relative status. Yet in Gunga Din, as in much of Kipling’s prose including The Man Who Would Be King, characters that indulge in blatantly racist assumptions about the people around them generally turn out to be myopically wrong. The narrator in Gunga Din describes the bhisti as “black-faced”, dirty, and with a “squidgy” nose. Yet when he describes how Gunga Din went to tend the wounded under fire, the narrator describes him as being “white” inside. To a racist (which the narrator assuredly is), the highest possible compliment is to identify another person as behaving like a person of the racist’s own ethnic group. But the narrator does not know Gunga Din well. Although Gunga Din clearly speaks and understands enough English to convey an important and timely thought in a grammatically correct sentence even while dying, the narrator persists in bawling orders at him in bad Anglo-Hindustani. There is no significant friendship or social contact between the men, so overt conversations about deeper subjects such as religious faith or Gunga Din’s city of origin and native tongue cannot occur.
If Gunga Din is Hindu—which could perhaps be deduced given the loincloth he wore and the fact that he serves as a bhisti but is not necessarily an ethnic Bhisti—then carrying water to thirsty soldiers is part of his dharma or his religious duty. Receiving abuse from the troopers he aids is simply an inherent aspect of it, and taking the bad along with the good bothers him very little. When he brings water to the British soldiers and is hit by some of them because he is not physically capable of serving them all at once, he does not complain. Why would he: he is a man performing a divinely appointed sacrament. Indeed, the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47 says: “Your right is to the duty only, not to the fruits thereof. Do not act for the results of your deeds. Never be attached to not doing the duty.” With Gunga Din’s dying breath, he has no regard for anything except whether he has adequately done his duty. He has: the drink he gives the narrator, who survives only as a direct result of Gunga Din’s actions, is the drink the narrator describes as the sweetest and best he ever drank, despite the poor water quality. Accordingly, the absolute last place the narrator might see a Hindu Gunga Din would be in the Hell he envisions as appropriate for himself: Gunga Din must be reincarnated in a role proportionate to the adequacy of his service, which has been spectacular.
If Gunga Din is not Hindu but Islamic, as are most ethnic Bhisti, then his attire is unusual but his level of linguistic fluency is not. Din is not only fluent in his native tongue, he speaks enough English to say something truly significant at the end of his life. Because most men raised in the Islamic tradition learn Arabic as well as their own native tongue, to better understand the teachings of the Qur’an, if Gunga Din is Islamic he therefore most likely speaks not one, not two, but three languages: his own, Arabic, and enough English to understand the narrator and others. This makes him far more educated than the British soldier, who is blissfully unaware of the discrepancy. Illiteracy in the enlisted ranks was common in Kipling’s India, and although sergeants had to be able to read and write in English the lower-ranked enlisted men did not.
As a Sunni Muslim, Gunga Din would be familiar to the principle of submission to the will of Allah and to destiny: if Allah had decided that Gunga Din should be born a Bhisti, then by working as a water-bearer Gunga Din is fulfilling his spiritual destiny and serving Allah as well as the British soldiers. His selfless and tireless devotion to his work, the superb way in which he performs his duties without complaint, and his death in the service of others would therefore have certainly guaranteed him a place in Paradise according to the tenets of Islam. Indeed, even if Gunga Din did as many natives who served the British did, and converted to Christianity, he earned salvation either from that or from risking and even sacrificing his own life in order to save the narrator, which is a very noble, Christ-like act. Why, therefore, would the narrator expect to see Gunga Din in Hell, and still in a servitor capacity? It is because Kipling’s narrator is supposed to be ignorant. That’s part of what creates the pervasive irony.
The narrator in Gunga Din betrays his ignorance repeatedly and ironically throughout the poem. Referring to Gunga Din as an “old idol” is offensive to both Hindus, who regard idols as physical representations and connections to their gods, and to Muslims who are forbidden to worship idols at all. He physically and verbally abuses the heroic water-bearer who routinely rescues wounded troopers under fire, including the narrator. However, at the end of the poem it becomes obvious that time has brought the narrator some perspective. He acknowledges that Gunga Din was in fact made by God, and also states that the bhisti he abused so frequently is actually a better man than himself. Thus the man in the “higher” social position eventually comes to the same conclusion the reader has already reached: it is the man farther down in the social hierarchy who displays a superior level of spirituality, service, courage, education, and service to others.
The narrator in Tommy is also a British soldier, but instead of dishing out the abuse as the narrator in Gunga Din did, he receives it from British civilians. Kipling establishes the narrator’s class and heritage through his patterns of speech, which is similar to that of the narrator in Gunga Din but lacking the Indian words and references. Kipling also uses keywords to establish the setting or location of the poem (England), the approximate time frame, and the narrator’s own profession and relationship to the local civilians. These are radically different from the keywords used in Gunga Din, but the technique Kipling uses is the same.
The first keywords that appear in the poem are “public-house”, “pint”, and “beer”. Beer, the quintessential British refreshment, is sold by the pint to the general public. Most of the establishments who specialize in the sale of beer are therefore called “public-houses” or “pubs”. Many Britons have a preferred pub or “local” where they go to socialize with friends after work. So a pint of beer in a pub is almost stereotypically British. But the narrator is unable to purchase libation because the “publican”, or proprietor, refuses to serve “red-coats”. So in two lines, Kipling establishes the location (England), the profession and gender of the speaker (a soldier, and by definition male in Kipling’s day). Kipling also shows that the publican, a civilian, has the authority to refuse service to the soldier and that the serving-maids think the whole situation is funny.
The keyword “red-coat” refers to the uniform of a soldier in the British Army or Marines. The colors were distinct from the British Navy, which favored blue and white. In India during Kipling’s day, the British army had shifted away from the highly impractical red and white uniforms and issued military men khaki colored uniforms starting in 1948 and increasingly after the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 as an indicator of a major change in British foreign policy. Accordingly, the term “red-coat” identifies the narrator as a Marine or Army soldier, but not someone serving in India.
Kipling establishes the time as between 1861 and 1901 by referring to his military dress as “the Widow’s Uniform”. The word “widow” is capitalized despite not being at the start of a sentence or a line, and since the narrator has already been established as a British soldier, the only head of state he could have been talking about is Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria was not widowed until the death of her first and only husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1861, although she dressed in black for the rest of her life. Her predecessor and successor, William IV and Edward VII respectively, were both male. But, had Kipling used the word “Queen” to refer to her instead, the poem could have been set as early as 1837.
Tommy has an unusual naming convention that illustrates the extent to which the narrator and his fellow soldiers are dehumanized. The narrator is referred to as “Tommy” or “Atkins”, both of which were generic names for a British soldier, but that are most likely not the narrator’s real name. The people speaking to the narrator are strangers whom he most likely has never met. Kipling never uses the soldier’s real name or shows the civilians interacting with him as a human being. In this respect he is shown even less respect by his fellow Englishmen than the narrator of Gunga Din showed to the water-bearer. “Tommy” and his fellow soldiers are either despised or exalted based on whether the nation is at war. Both images are equally unrealistic, particularly when even the positive behaviors of the public treat soldiers like nameless, fungible members of a group instead of as the individual human beings they actually are.
Throughout the poem, the narrator in Tommy relates how he is treated poorly by English civilians during peacetime: he is refused service in a pub, turned away from a theater (while sober) in favor of a drunk civilian, and generally treated like a criminal. But when “the guns begin to shoot”, the narrator and his fellow soldiers are treated like heroes even if they haven’t personally done anything heroic. This situational irony is so blatant that even the low-ranking, poorly educated Tommy recognizes and resents it.
That “Tommy” is an enlisted soldier as opposed to an officer is quite evident even though Kipling does not need to state it overtly: the use of Cockney patois suffices. Officers, in Kipling’s era, were almost always literate, educated men from families wealthy enough to pay for their commission. The higher the officer’s rank, the higher his probable (or assumed) social connections. An officer was assumed to be a gentleman in terms of social conduct, habits, and peer relationships even if he was not descended from a financially independent family. So no publican or theater employee would be inclined to anger one by denying him service.
In Tommy, as in Gunga Din, Kipling drops a bombshell in the last line of the poem. The narrator, who begins by using the first person singular to describe his personal anecdotal experience, expands in the second-last stanza to use the first person plural. It is now “we” who are the soldiers who are most remarkably like the reader. The narrator is gathering strength and is now speaking as representative of a group when he asks that people simply have reasonable expectations of soldiers, and that soldiers be treated “rationally” based on their individual traits and behaviors instead of as representatives of some amorphous red-coated blob. But in the final line, Kipling shifts suddenly into the third person: “An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!” He’s now issuing a direct warning to the civilians and upper-class people whose insistence on interacting with soldiers in unrealistic, exaggerated ways both positive and negative. Their stupidity and hypocrisy are not going unnoticed, and in fact every single “Tommy” in a red uniform is perfectly aware of it.
Generally it is the upper classes that rebuke the lower ones. For an enlisted soldier, treated by many as the lowest of the low, to not only rebuke but subtly threaten the citizens his army serves, is a dramatic inversion of class. By identifying himself, and all other soldiers, as being perfectly capable of seeing and acknowledging the hypocrisy that everybody else seems to miss, the poorly-educated Tommy flips the script intellectually the same way Gunga Din did morally and spiritually: he proves, by his deduction and analysis, to be more intellectually capable than the people who shun and criticize him.
Gentlemen-Rankers describes a different kind of class inversion. In this case, the title describes men who have voluntarily come down in class, and who have placed themselves under the authority of men who under regular circumstances would have been considered beneath them in social status. In Kipling’s day, military officers typically came from the upper class and received a particular education both social and academic. A “gentleman”, in the terminology of the day, was a man who was well off enough to live off of his land and invested assets, who did not have to perform manual labor in order to feed himself or his family.
Originally the term implied landed gentry, but after the agricultural depression in the 1870s the British economy shifted away from land as a means of production and toward industry. Accordingly, merchants, bankers, and other business owners became wealthy enough to raise their children and grandchildren in a privileged environment so that by the third generation their values, behaviors, and life experiences were virtually indistinguishable from those of the landed gentry, with whom they frequently intermarried. Military service was considered an appropriate pursuit for a young gentleman, but he generally entered it as an officer by buying a commission.
The British military of Kipling’s era was characterized by a vast social gulf between the officer and enlisted classes, however there was also a great deal of mutual respect. The officers respected the skills, toughness, and raw courage of the men they commanded; the enlisted men who came from the working class respected their officers for their education, intelligence, wisdom, and kindness. This mutual respect and trust helped build the military discipline that made Britain into a dominant colonial power. However the respect was not automatic and it was not conferred on a man simply for having a specific rank. When a man didn’t belong and was noticeably different from his peers, despite his competence in other matters he was frequently denied respect from men above, below, and equal to him in rank.
Although there were means by which an enlisted man could be promoted to lieutenant, it was not a process deemed universally good. The Duke of Wellington and General Redvers Buller, writing nearly half a century apart, asserted that officers promoted from the enlisted ranks were seldom good or effective even if men so promoted had been officers in the past. The enlisted men preferred officers who were gentlemen, believing them to be better educated in matters of military strategy and also less cruel.
Gentlemen typically only joined the enlisted ranks if they were somehow disgraced and needed to hide overseas, far away from creditors, family, or law enforcement. In exchange for the anonymity of the uniform, a man sacrificed his social standing not just for the moment, but permanently. In Gentlemen-Rankers, Kipling uses specific literary techniques to show the implications of the young man’s decision and the sense of alienation he experiences as a result.
As always, Kipling uses a speaking style as evidence of the narrator’s class. The gentleman-ranker speaks without dropping letters or using slang. His use of compound sentences and his references to the Bible and to Shakespeare’s Hamlet mark him as an educated man. Although he is now a lowly trooper, he “has run his own six horses”: that is to say, he was once wealthy enough to own half a dozen prize racehorses, and skilled enough to ride them himself. The implication is that the narrator has lost all his wealth, perhaps through gambling or some other disgraceful action, and has accordingly enlisted to serve overseas. The fact his uniform includes a spur, sewn onto his jacket in worsted as evidence of his outstanding riding skills, now embarrasses him. Every time someone calls him a “Rider” (ordinarily a title of respect) or sends him on an errand on horseback, it reminds him of what he has lost. He therefore feels himself “branded” by what to most enlisted men would be a coveted insignia.
The Shakespearean reference “a little more than kin, and less than kind” is Hamlet’s cutting remark about his uncle Claudius, who becomes Hamlet’s stepfather by marrying his late brother’s wife. The world was “more than kin” while the narrator had money enough to indulge himself and everybody else, but now the Sergeant is “less than kind” in two ways: he is fundamentally unlike the narrator, having been born to a class appropriate to the enlisted ranks, and he also fails to show the narrator the deference, and courtesy he is used to receiving from such men in his former life.
The habits that mark a gentleman—riding well, waltzing well, and lacking the unlamblike aggression valued among the men of the working class - now set the narrator up as a target of ridicule. He lacks the natural aptitude and early training of his enlisted peers, but he finds himself absorbing some of their values: literally thrashing somebody for remarking on his dancing skills, and figuratively drowning himself in beer. Yet the extent to which the soldier now feels trapped by his circumstances only becomes clear because of Kipling’s use of sarcasm. Kipling repeatedly uses the word “sweet” to sarcastically describe things about which the young gentleman now feels bitter: mucking out stalls, emptying kitchen slops, and socializing with enlisted men and servants. Whereas the men around him accept occasional duties as a normal part of their routine, the narrator has been raised to believe the work is offensive and shameful. He feels himself degraded permanently as a result of having done it. That is one reason he envies the simple man who blacks his boots and sometimes accidentally calls him “sir”.
To the narrator in Gentlemen-Rankers, his class inversion—though voluntary—has been a grotesque mistake. He feels himself degraded by having to share a whitewashed room with a man who snores or mutters drunkenly. The guilt he experiences as a result of not writing home or of not keeping various unspecified oaths he swore is not sufficient to make him actually pick up a pen or follow through on his promises, but it is enough to wake him up at night. To relieve his self-inflicted pain, he drugs himself and considers it a justifiable behavior. Kipling’s narrator makes allusion to the Curse of Reuben, a Biblical character who was disinherited for having had sexual relations with one of his father’s concubines. Reuben was not exiled, but was deprived of his birthright as eldest in favor of one of his younger brothers. Disinherited perhaps, and certainly shamed, the narrator feels as though he can never come home. The extreme shame he experiences is something he views as more than ample punishment for whatever crime preceded his enlistment.
Unlike the gentleman-ranker who has fallen from his former station in life, the other soldiers do not believe that they have lost all form of hope, honor, love, and truth. They have no problem dancing with the “blowzy housemaids” the narrator regards with such scorn, and they do not regard themselves as sheep of any sort—lost lambs, black sheep, or otherwise. Whereas the enlisted people surrounding the narrator appear to function perfectly in their surroundings without bleating over what they do not have, the narrator is nearly paralyzed with a combination of guilt, shame, disgust, and bitterness. Despite his perceived advantages of birth and early education, and despite having been taught from birth to display stoicism and the “stiff upper lip” so prized in British tradition, the narrator is not functioning as an adult. His work does not tax him to the point of exhaustion, nor is it beyond his intellectual capability. He is simply a prisoner of his own negative emotions and is self-medicating with alcohol and possibly other substances as well.
Finally, Kipling uses irony to illustrate how sometimes people don’t appreciate what they have until they lose it permanently. Until the gentleman-ranker actually experiences the loss of his privileged social position, and with it any meaningful form of connection to the people around him, he does not appreciate it. His more accurate perspective, and his ability to experience actual remorse for his actions, is possible only after he is stripped of all his pride and everything he holds dear. Had he remained a gentleman and found some other way to atone for whatever he did wrong, he may never have achieved the same level of insight he has now.
Kipling’s use of class inversion subtly undermines the notion that people higher up in social hierarchy are better, smarter, or more spiritually advanced than the people “beneath” them. By using specific literary techniques such as dialect and keywords to establish the narrator’s class, and to contrast the narrator’s experiences and perspectives with the other people in the poem, Kipling creates an ironic contrast between the speaker’s level of enlightenment and his perceived social worth relative to others.
The Bible, Genesis 49:4 (NIV)
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Act I, Scene II.
Shaw, James A. Officers and Gentlemen: Gentlemanly Mystique and Military Effectiveness in the Nineteenth-Century British Army. Copyright 2011 by James A. Shaw, published May 14, 2011. MilitaryHistoryOnline.com
Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47
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