In his short poem “The Camel’s
Hump”, the Victorian poet Rudyard Kipling underscores the need for
self-discipline at both personal and public level in
a humorous way. The type of humour Kipling employs is called dark humour. The
reader may laugh but the laughter has a dark undertone.
The
poem has 7 stanzas, rhyming abcb bbddb efgf hbaab ijkj
lbaab bbaab. In the poem, Kipling juxtaposes two images. First, he directs the readers’ attention to a camel with a
hump displayed at the [London] Zoo. Next, he says that people who do not
exerts themselves physically would also get what he called a “black and blue” “cameelious
hump”. The image of people with a camel-like hump evokes humour, at least
initially. However, he says that this fate is not limited to any age
group:
Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo,
If we haven't enough to do-oo-oo,
We get the hump-
Cameelious hump-
The hump that is black and blue!
The fact that anyone can fall prey to this
disease would certainly create a sense of unease in the mind of the reader.
The reason for what the poet calls “the
cameelious hump” is obviously lack of self-discipline born out of laziness.
People of all ages either “sit still” or “frowst
with a book by the fire”. The result is the black and blue hump. The
colours “black and blue” stand for pain, disease and death. It is this reference to pain, disease and death that adds a
sense of profound unease to the poem which sounds humorous on the surface.
Next, the poet suggest the only cure for the
dreaded hump: “to take a large hoe and
a shovel also,/ [a]nd dig till you gently perspire”. If one
does that, then the sunshine, the wind and the Djinn in the garden would
magically get rid of the dreadful protrusion. If one did not heed to this
advice, a dreadful fate awaits that person. He would end up on display similar
to the camel in the Zoo being gawked at by healthier people who would look at
him as an oddity or a freak.
Looking at the socioeconomic message of the
poem, the poem is about a worldview upheld by Kipling’s contemporaries. The
poem was written at the very height of the British Empire. At the time, Britain
had become very rich because of the wealth pumped into it by its many colonies.
As a result, many people led sedentary leisurely lives which made them rotund
and unhealthy. This lifestyle was at odds with the basic philosophy on which
British society was built: Protestant work ethics.
Protestant work ethics prescribed a simple
life, frugality and hard work which required British people to be
self-disciplined. Many people in Britain, including Kipling, believed that it
was this life-style based on self-discipline that enabled Britain to be a great
empire. In the poem, Kipling airs his worry about lack of discipline in people
leading to the decline of the British Empire resulting in them being captured
and put on display by another stronger and more disciplined nation in the
future similar to the way they have displayed all the exotic creatures
displayed at zoos.
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