Still Toying with "Tommy": On Kipling and Prejudice

It is a coincidence that today happens to be Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and I post a short blog note -- my first entry in some time -- on prejudice. My reflections are not on racial prejudice in the United States. There is unfortunately much of that still to be reflected on and rectified. What stimulates my thoughts is the poetry of a perhaps unlikely source: Rudyard Kipling.

In the estimation of George Orwell, "Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting" ("Rudyard Kipling," Collection of Essays, 117). Orwell was a contemporary and published this essay in 1942, six years after Kipling's death. Orwell was also a writer of powerful pen and deep cultural observation. I, however, find what little I know of Kipling's verse to be complex -- complex with regard to imperialism, morality, and aesthetics. More than Orwell concedes, Kipling is at times artful in his moral critique of British imperialism and social prejudice.

Rudyard Kipling, 1895

One example comes from his poem "Tommy" (1890). The speaker is a common British soldier, who was by this time already known in slang as Tommy Atkins. Such soldiers then, as now, in both the U.K., the United States, and other countries, came often from the lowest socio-economic strata of society. They were much in demand as Great Britain expanded its imperialistic ambitions ever more globally afar in the latter half of the nineteenth century. They did the dirty work that made the crown sparkle with gems and ever increasing wealth. Kipling captures in this poem through Tommy's decidedly non-Oxford dialect a tension in British imperialism that consisted of not only prejudice against those foreign others but also those domestic others.

The speaker recounts in each stanza some experience of social prejudice, exclusion, ostracism, ridicule, moral snobbery, and a myopic concern for social justice. Then he follows each main experience with a varying chorus that points out the inconsistent ways in which not only proper British society and politicians but also bar maids and common theater-goers disregard "Tommy" (the familiar form of [dis]regard) in everyday situations, but quickly revert to "Mr. Atkins" (the respectful form of needy regard) when the topic turns to patriotic parades, military deployment, celebration of national heroes, personal protection, and defense from foreign enemies.

Striking, among other things, is the way in which the speaker captures how embarrassingly quickly disregard for him and his "kind" can turn to regard, nastiness can turn to need, jeering can turn to appreciation, and rejection can turn to reception. The aesthetic oscillation between the vocal forms of address "Tommy" and "Mr. Atkins" reflects the hypocrisy, or two-facedness, of those in society who so alternate.

Particularly indicting, it seems to me today, is the way in which politicians, as the speaker reports, can outwardly advocate improved military conditions and benefits for common soldiers, yet not only do they fail to deliver but they also miss what is most important to this common solider who would stand to benefit: humane, caring, consistent treatment face-to-face. The speaker says he would go without even more food provisions if those advocating them would just treat him like a valued human being: "We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational. / Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face."

Finally, the poem ends with the speaker's chilling reflection of social and moral condemnation: "An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!" If there were any doubt about whether this hypocritical, inhumane instrumentalism of imperial and social convenience were done in the dark, the speaker removes it. He not only passively suffers; he actively sees. He experiences it painfully as he describes in so many situations, but what he ends with is a self-conscious recognition of his experienced injustice that, with the exclamation point, emphasizes his emotional anguish and the implied accusation. The sense is that this injustice does not escape notice -- and it will not escape judgment either.

Sometimes we need strong voices like those of "Tommy" or "MLK" to bring to light the various forms of inhumane treatment, marginalization, and prejudice in our own midst that work against human flourishing, consistent implementation of moral values, and social harmony.

Tommy

By Rudyard Kipling

(1890; reprinted in Barrack-Room Ballads, 1892)

I went into a public 'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls! 

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap.
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit. 

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes," when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints; 

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace. 

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country " when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

Echoes of Sophocles in the Death of a Senator

Immediately after Senator John McCain passed away last Saturday, August 25, controversy swirled. It came from the current commander-in-chief.  The President's advisers counseled him to issue a statement praising McCain as a "hero," but the President instead released a simple Tweet expressing his rather indifferent "sympathies." Another article from the Washington Post captured the significance of the move well in its title, "Trump's not-so-subtle denigration of a dead man." The two men, both Americans, both officials elected to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, ostensibly were on the same side. Animosity between them, however, prevailed.

John Sidney McCain III (1936 - 2018)

Some of the reasons for their animosity are complex, perhaps even principled.  As former Senate colleague and Vice President Joe Biden remarked at a memorial service in McCain's home state of Arizona, "John could not stand the abuse of power wherever he saw it, in whatever form, in whatever country." Some of their reasons were petty.  President Trump disliked McCain for the latter's pointed critiques of his policy.  Even in the wake of McCain's death, the President ordered the American flag raised again to full mast less than 24-hours after it was lowered to half-staff in honor of the fallen warrior and statesman.  Only after public pressure did the President reverse his decision and say that the flag would remain at half-staff until McCain was laid to rest tomorrow, a week after the flag controversy began.

What is telling about the remarks from Biden is that he represents the Democratic Party, but McCain, the Republican Party. On the surface, they should have been at odds, not two fellow Republicans.  Moreover, it should have been the current President of his own party, not the former Vice President of the opposition party, who could sincerely insist, as Biden did, "John was a hero. His character, courage, honor, and integrity. His optimism. That’s what made John special. It made John a giant among all of us."

The affirmation of McCain by Biden in my ear echoed similar comments by Odysseus in Sophocles' Ajax:  "My enemy, it's true.  But he was noble. / ... His greatness weighs more with me than my hate" (ll. 1355, 1357).

Ajax, placing his sword in the ground.

There are, of course, major differences between the circumstances surrounding McCain's and Ajax's deaths, but the point of contact that I wish to highlight is the various characters' responses to it.

In Sophocles' play, Ajax suffers what he believes is dishonor and shame after being passed over in the privilege to receive Achilles' armor, which went to Odysseus instead. This was a mark of Odysseus' worthiness in the eyes of the Greek leaders to carry on the tradition of their finest warrior.  Ajax goes into a rage and plots to kill the leaders of the Greek army because of the slight, which he was prevented from doing only by the bewitching intervention of Athena. After Ajax dies from a self-inflicted wound, first Menelaus and then Agamemnon step forward to prevent his proper burial.  Such a move -- that is, being denied burial -- was in that culture a deep disgrace within the community and carried unsettling consequences for the departed in the afterlife, such as it existed.

The third of the Greek leaders whom Ajax had attempted to destroy was Odysseus, who nevertheless appears and counsels Agamemnon to relent.  Agamemnon is perplexed. In Greek culture, to rejoice over an enemy's death is deemed fitting, and to put an enemy to public shame is part of winning honor for oneself. At the outset of the play, Athena invites Odysseus into a little playful ridicule of the beguiled Ajax and then matter-of-factly asks him rhetorically, "But to laugh at your enemies-- / What sweeter laugher can there be than that?" (ll. 78-79).  So when later Agamemnon asks Odysseus, "But now he is dead, / Shouldn't you rightly trample on his corpse?" (ll. 1347-1348), Agamemnon's rhetorical question has added cultural and moral force.

The unfolding of events and dialogue in Sophocles' drama raises questions about, among other things, the recognition of nobility even among one's enemies.  Another question, similar to that which the final books of Homer's Iliad give shape, is what honors are owed the dead.  Achilles is checked in his hate of Hector, whom he has killed, by Priam's passionate, paternal intercession.  A suggestion of that epic poem's narrative arc is that even by Greek standards such violence as depicted in it was excessive.  Priam persuades Achilles through appeal to their shared humanity, fellow feeling, and the imaginative empathy that comes from thinking through a situation with exchanged eyes.

In the Ajax, something similar seems to be at work within Odysseus.  Early on, in what is a programmatic speech for the rest of the drama, Odysseus replies to Athena, who wishes for Odysseus to ridicule and gloat over the out-of-mind Ajax because of his reversal of fortune:

… Yet I pity
His wretchedness, though he is my enemy,
For the terrible yoke of blindness that is on him.
I think of him, but also of myself;
For I see the true state of all of us that live—
We are dim shapes, no more, and weightless shadows. (Ajax, ll. 121-26; my emphasis)

Odysseus feels that way about Ajax, conflicted, while Ajax lived and his life was threatened by him.  And so when Ajax has died, his pity takes a different form, as he explains to Agamemnon: "I hated him while it was fair to hate" (l. 1346).  Odysseus courageously implores his commander-in-chief,

Don't cast out this brave man's body
Unburied; don't in the gods' name be so hard.
Vindictiveness should not so govern you
As to make you trample on the right. (ll. 1332-1335)

Agamemnon worries that if he consents to honor Ajax with a proper burial he will look weak: "You'll make me look a coward in this transaction" (l. 1362).  Odysseus counters, "Generous, though, as all the Greeks will say. ... However you do it, you will deserve praise" (ll. 1363, 1369).

In the end, Agamemnon relents, but he still does not regard the fallen Ajax as a hero.  He still detests him and thinks only of his own honor, not that of Ajax.  In contrast, Odysseus can say, as noted above, "But he was noble" (l. 1355).

More than two thousand years later, it remains hard for leaders to look past themselves, past their animosities, and say with a sense of shared humanity, "Yet I pity his wretchedness, though he is my enemy." It remains hard to say, "I think of him, but I think also of myself, for I see the true state of all of us that live." It is still a challenge, even after former opponents and critics have died, to confess, "But he was noble." And it is not just leaders in exceptional circumstances who struggle with this.

Echoes of Dante in Kant

One of the great pleasures of reading and re-reading is encountering conceptual connections between authors and works that you may have never considered in common.  I had one of these experiences recently while reading a short book about Dante.  While working through the author's discussion of Monarchia and its relation to the Purgatorio, I found myself thinking that in some respects Dante's dualistic political philosophy anticipated important elements in Kant's short monograph Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and his essays "What Is Enlightenment?", "The Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent," and "Toward Perpetual Peace."

Vale, Vocative

Texting has introduced a revolution in communication, and for some of us that is not always a good thing.  An article I read recently, for instance, demonstrated in detail the damage, if not quite full death, that the apostrophe has suffered as a result of the inconvenience to use the key combinations necessary on phones and tablets to punctuate possessives and other grammatical instances appropriately.  I have long lamented the eclipse of the apostrophe on road and street signs.  Look around.  You may not have noticed but now you will -- except if you are going to Martha's Vineyard, one of the few places that has received an exception by the bureaucratic authorities who make such subtle but momentous decisions.

As troubling as the loss of apostrophes is to me, there is another loss even more disconcerting personally.  It is the near total annihilation of the vocative.

A vocative construction, as its name implies, is used when invoking, calling, hailing, or addressing someone. (Ironically, for present purposes, the literary device of addressing someone not present is called an apostrophe, and it is to my mind no coincidence that both are on life support or have been dispatched to a new grammatical gulag system.)  For example, you might say, "John, where is my hat?"  In that interrogative, the vocative is the address to John, and it is marked off with a comma.  The same sort of construction occurs when we greet people, "Hello, John."  It is just a common affair. It happens every day.

But that is just the thing that is so troubling:  the loss of the vocative now also happens every day and everywhere.  I sampled the other week four people in the same context, and not one of them had heard of a vocative construction, much less knew that it is proper to mark vocative uses with a comma.  They just took for granted that what they did multiple times a day with their friends on their phones was the formally and grammatically proper way to write, if they happened to think about grammar as a system at all.

For someone such as I am who finds grammar for the most part an anchor in a seismically changing world, this development, including the grammatical ignorance, is unsettling. I see this everywhere, and it irks me.  It is not just in professional e-mails that begin "Hi Polytropos" -- without a comma.  It is not just that I find my cortisol levels rising whenever I log into Google, the splash page for which greets me "Hi Polytropos" without a comma.  I see it occasionally at more festive times, for instance, when a group of people want to celebrate someone's birthday, and they order a cake with a message inscribed in the icing.  This happens more than you might think, at least in my social experience.  Without exception, the last 7 cakes (that's all I can remember; I'm sure the streak is longer) have all used a vocative incorrectly in wishing someone happy birthday by name, the equivalent to "Happy Birthday Polytropos!" -- without a comma.

Now, I realize that you might think, "Heavens!  This Polytropos is a grammatical grouch." I dispute that, and you can read some of my other prior posts about grammar for explanations of why I think it is important (e.g., here and here and here and here).  But grammar has real life and death consequences. 

Consider, if you will, this tag line in an e-mail that I received not long ago from a favorite restaurant, which also happened to be the e-mail's subject:  "Let's eat everyone!"

Think about that for a moment.   "Let's eat everyone!"

Good.  Kind of revolting, huh?  This exhortation was meant to be an encouragement to fine dining.  The clause was, after all, that used by the talented chef who said that to his patrons after surveying their culinary preferences and the wine that they brought before he embarked on a seven-course tasting menu.  The e-mail that was meant to invite one to dinner out caused me to lose my appetite, and all because of a vocative -- without a comma.

When the restaurateur failed to mark off the vocative properly, what should have been the hortatory subjunctive, "Let's eat, everyone!" became an invitation to cannibalism.  Grammar has real life and death consequences.

You might say to yourself, "Well, I can sort of understand the need to mark off the addressee(s) in the case when preceded by a verb of a certain action, but surely it is negotiable in other instances, like greetings." But then you have created a rule, and you have re-written a grammatical rule, and you seem to invoke the following of that rule.  So, I might rejoin, why not just follow the rules that already exist for good reason rather than do gymnastics to create your own rules?

The grammatical descriptivist is the person who, generally, says that grammar is what people do with it.  But if the innate descriptivist becomes to some extent a prescriptivist (grammar is what convention has for good reason laid down ought to be done), then the principle of rules in grammar is conceded, and the burden of proof for deviating from proper practice is on the one who has inherited a grammatical deviation largely by technological change, social practice, and poor primary education.

The loss of certain punctuation and the erosion of both grammar and clear writing are, I think, largely the effects of the prevalence of texting.  It is also more than that.  It is a function of different discourse, one that is implicitly imperialistic.  It is also a function of not merely what people write but also what people read (or do not read).  It is, moreover, a function of lack of basic instruction about what is becoming and why.  When I explained to those four people mentioned above what a vocative is, why it is used, and why it is punctuated the way that it is, with examples, at least three of the four said, "Oh, well, I've never heard of that, but it makes perfect sense.  I see it now."

Maybe that is all it takes, small steps in our own circles, to resist the grammatically insidious domination of Google's login page, e-mail greetings, and cake decorators in our daily life. This is, indeed, a Resistance movement.  You can join.  It really does depend on you.  Otherwise, an invitation to punctuate might be corrupted further, not only in form but also in diction:  "Let's puncture everyone." One mistake might lead to more, and that's how grammar can be a matter of life or death.  We will then be saying "Vale!" to a lot more than the vocative.

Campus Rage Culture

I am reproducing below an interview-article with Jonathan Haidt about the genealogy and anatomy of campus rage culture. That is my term to refer to the now common system of expected and policed beliefs and practices on college campuses in the United States that characteristically seeks to exclude certain opinions in the supposed service of inclusion and to homogenize ideological perspectives for the purported purpose of diversifying viewpoints. It will, for instance, marginalize some authors in order to de-marginalize others, all because in this new political-civil religion marginalization is bad. (See, e.g., the new policy of the English department at Harvard.) It must be rooted out by Inquisition, alleged heretics must be proscribed, and all of their writings -- no matter their content or actual arguments -- must be condemned.

I have decided to reproduce in full the interview with Professor Haidt for several reasons. One is that he is a well-respected social psychologist, and his observations therefore carry a weight and garner a hearing that others might not receive. He has waded in previously on the danger of the proliferation of required "trigger warnings" and the protections that universities seem endlessly to supply undergraduates (e.g., his "The Coddling of the American Mind" in The Atlantic, Sept. 2015).

Another reason is that this is a timely topic of utmost importance not only for university campuses but also for the nation. It is important for the nation because what is occurring on campuses in opposition to some persons and viewpoints is often, as was the case at Villanova University last week, eerily similar to the Southern lynchings of persons like Emmett Till on the basis of hate fomented by slander, false accusations, and misimpressions, typically based on hearsay. The campus rage culture is a contemporary form of lynching others based on prejudice. 

For instance, Villanova University students and faculty who protested the speaking engagement of Charles Murray reported their reason to be his "white supremacist" writings in The Bell Curve; however, it remains unclear whether the protesters had read all of the book in question, including the clarifying sections designed specifically to prevent readers from drawing unwarranted inferences. As two Cornell University professors note in this recent New York Times column, “…only a small fraction of the people who have opinions about that book have actually read it. (Indeed, some people protesting Mr. Murray openly acknowledged not having read any of his work.)” It is not uncommon at such speaking events for protesters to be asked why they are publicly denouncing Mr. Murray or some other controversial figure, calling him a “bigot” and “white supremacist,” if they admit that they are not sure that he in fact was one. What matters to them is not the truth to guide their beliefs, actions, and emotions but a social practice of protest, marginalization, and essentialist name-calling. (Would that they had read this prior post.)

Another student at Villanova who actually attended the lecture is reported to have started crying after it because she understood Mr. Murray to have said that her specific undergraduate degree was worthless. Other students also report that a concerned faculty member approached the student to check on her and learned that this was the reason for her tears. When, in an effort to reverse the student’s lachrymose lament by encouraging an accurate, charitable understanding of Murray's words, the professor said, “I don’t think that is what he said,” the student replied, “I'm not ready to hear that right now.” Other faculty members are said to have embraced the student and joined her, as a form of comfort, in lambasting the speaker. What mattered was not the truth to guide her beliefs, actions, and emotions but a social practice of emotive affirmation to demonstrate tribalistic loyalties. And this, mind you, occurred at a university whose explicit mission promotes veritas (truth), unitas (unity), and caritas (charity).

Those three virtues -- truth, unity, and charity -- are what hang in the balance for larger society nationally according to what emerges from our universities locally.

Du Bois, Double-Consciousness, and a Lingering Problem

W. E. B. Du Bois gave eloquent expression to a personal and socio-cultural tension at the beginning of the twentieth century that is simultaneously a reality that many of us have felt at one time or another, or perhaps even constantly.  When Du Bois described the central problem of the new century for black Americans as being that of the color-line, he also articulated the challenge of negotiating different worlds, allegiances, and identities as that of double-consciousness:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (The Souls of Black Folk, p. 5)

Du Bois has in mind a particular historical struggle.  For Du Bois, this double-consciousness was the distinct self-perception, or group perception, of being on the one hand black and on the other hand Americans.  If we can frame the tension that he identifies more generally, we might describe it as the unsettling difficulty of standing at the same time in more than one tradition.

On the Roman Republic's Decline and U.S. Politics

While I was recently reading relatively new history of the Romans (B. Campbell, The Romans and Their World), I ran across a few passages that resonated as having more than superficial connection to the contemporary western, and especially American, political scene. What made them so vivid was that in the main these passages were quotations or paraphrases of ancient Roman historians themselves.  Let me briefly discuss three of them:  signs of a declining culture (Sallust), lust for personal political power (Florus), and moral descent and civic paralysis (Livy).