It all started from the Spanish-American War and led to the Philippine-American War; the Philippine-American War began in the year 1898 and was declared in 1902, but it has been said that it lasted longer. The United States attempted to invade the Philippines more than once. It all started when President McKinley allegedly claimed that “God Almighty” had ordered him to make the Philippines a US colony and that was when Spain agreed to attach the Philippines to the new imperial power. That said, the poem "The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling has helped improve my level of perception and feeling about what is happening in the world and in me. I felt disappointed at first before finally finding a sense of understanding. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At the beginning of this poem the speaker shows us that they are gathering their best men to invade the Philippines, to my disappointment. In the second line of the poem it says, “Send the best you raise –” (Kipling, 2). Knowing that they were gathering the best people, they would most likely conquer the Philippines. When I translated the quote, I understood better that it meant that only the bravest and strongest would become colonizers and soldiers, which automatically disappointed me, because I knew that the Philippines would not conquer the United States, for example with Pearl Harbor, they knew what they had to do to get what they wanted, just like what happened in the Philippine-American War, but when you compare the two they got nothing out of killing people. I strongly disapprove of this poem, as it began. However, halfway through the poem, the speaker becomes racist and speaks as if he is superior, to my disgust. In line 12, the speaker reminds the natives that they would be conquered and not be the conquered; It bothers me that they feel superior when they aren't. I'm disgusted, because that sentence represented racism to me and it definitely doesn't sit well with me. A great example can be slavery, because back then whites made Africans believe they were superior to them, but in this case whites really aren't above anyone, even if they felt like they were. Overall, the middle part was extremely annoying and I didn't agree with most of what was said. Finally, at the end of “The White Man's Burden” the speaker shows us that the invasion was over, as far as I understood. As we see, "The lightly offered laurel, / The easy and ungrudged praise:" (Kipling 52.54), meant that the war was over, which was a relief to me, especially knowing that it ended with praise "without rancor". This quote obviously made me feel sympathetic and understandable, because finally everything was over, everything that was wanted to be done happened and none of them really beat the other; that's why this interpretation of how I felt is the best. For example, the Spanish-American War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris between the United States. and Spain, and that was a relief. The Spanish-American War lasted only eight months, was a global war, and was physically fought in the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. In contrast, the Philippine-American War was a local conflict in the Philippines, being fought between the United States and the Filipinos , the war was longer, much bloodier, but it was not a global conflict. After all, the end of the poem was not terrible, it was understandable how everything happened and came together. Please note: this is just an example. Get a personalized document from us now.