At the end of the poem, Gunga Din ‘spies’ the poetic voice ‘with a bullet where his belt-plate should’ve been’ during battle. Gunga Din rushes over to save the poetic voice, and does so, before he gets shot himself. Just before Gunga Din eventually dies, the poetic voice tells him that however much he has mistreated him; he resents it and admits that Gunga Din is a better man than him.
The themes conveyed throughout the poem are racism and prejudice, loyalty, the strive for equality and the stories and memories of the soldiers fighting in the British ranks. Irony links the first three together: although the poetic voice mistreats and is racist to Gunga Din, Gunga Din’s loyalty to the soldier shows right up until the point when Gunga Din dies whilst saving the poetic voice. At that moment only does the poetic voice really realise that all are equal and that the quality of one’s actions is more important than the physical appearance. Gunga Din achieves equality moments before he is about to die, which seems quite sad as this is what he has tried to achieve for his whole service time in the British army. The mistreatment is ironic as although the soldier treats Gunga Din terribly, Gunga Din still stays loyal and even risks his own life to save his ‘superior’.
The poem compares different cultures and classes negatively. In doing so, the poet creates a division that runs parallel to the comparison of the ethnic beliefs and hostility between the two cultures looked at in this poem. The only time we see this division disappear is when the author compares the two cultures in a positive light, when a person from one culture saves someone from the other’s life. These parallel themes and imagery can cause for varied interpretations of the poem.
The sounds heard throughout this poem are mainly used with consonance. Within this consonance, the first word of the sequence is an adjective and the last words of the consonance sequence are nouns (the consonance is used to describe nouns). For example, “ grinnin’ gruntin’ Gunga Din “ and “ limpin’ lump”. All the rhyming couplets in the poem follow iambic tetrameter and the syllables are adapted to fit this metre by using contracted colloquialisms.
As noted before, the poem is written as a ballad with all rhyming couplets fitting to iambic tetrameter. Each verse contains 17 stanzas and those stanzas follow a rhyming pattern of AABAABAABAABAABBC. It is written in second person singular from the perspective of a British soldier fighting in India. The cockney colloquialisms make for a more interesting poem, as do the Indian colloquialisms that the British soldier sometimes uses. The swapping of these native phrases between the two different cultures could suggest that the relationship between Gunga Din and the poetic voice has been a long one. We see the poetic voice using Indian words such as ‘hitherao’ and Gunga Din shortening words like a cockney “ I’ope you like your drink”. In the fighting scenes, destructive words are used to describe the bullets for example, “bullets kickin’ dust” and “a bullet came an’ drilled”. This obviously suggests that the soldiers are always wary of the bullets as they describe them so scarily. The author has definitely conveyed the fear and the terrifying development of weapons and warfare of the time among the regiment.
The author has also demonstrated that every person can act as well as the next and that people should not be limited or judged by their skin colour, rank or ethnicity. The main message is that these things do not count towards how good a person you are and that racism and prejudice go against this message. Ultimately the message is do not be racist towards others. This message is conveyed very well because the whole poem is not about not being racist, it is about the journey a racist person went down to realise it is wrong. This is a more effective way of getting a point across because it makes us think that if this person can achieve equal treatment through perseverance then why can’t we?
In light of the authorial intention, the poem is good. It conveys a message in a different way whilst proving to be an interesting read that includes a fitting metre, personification, consonance and a good structure. I would have preferred it if the poetic voice would have mistreated Gunga Din even more so in the beginning to make his journey to equality more dramatic. It is good to have a character that you do not like become a hero over time and it definitely would have helped deliver the message.
By Max Winston
9WZ/En1a
