Department of English                               Gymnasium Steglitz Berlin
<back

>Contact

Two essays on Rudyard Kipling´s "The Secret of the Machines"

A powerful warning with an optimistic outlook

Rudyard Kipling, The Secret of the Machines

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
    We were melted in the furnace and the pit—
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
    We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
    And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:
And now if you will set us to our task,
    We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!

We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,
We can run and jump and swim and fly and dive,
We can see and hear and count and read and write!

Would you call a friend from half across the world?
    If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,
You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled
    Across the arch of heaven while you wait.
Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?
    You can start this very evening if you choose,
And take the Western Ocean in the stride
    Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!

The boat-express is waiting your command!
You will find the Mauretania at the quay,
Till her captain turns the lever ‘neath his hand,
And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.

Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head
    And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?
Do you want to turn a river in its bed,
    Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?
Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down
    From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,
To work the mills and tramways in your town,
    And irrigate your orchards as it flows?

It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,
And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
    We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
    If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
    Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
    We are everything on earth—except The Gods!

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!

 		kipling.jpg (9778 Byte)The poem "The Secret of the Machines" by Rudyard Kipling, a famous British poet, is about the great status of machines in the age of the industrial progress. The poet qualifies machines to define the situation from their point of view.
At the beginning they describe how they were built and what their abilities are. After the illustration of the improvement in human relations over large distances assisted by machines for telecommunication, they mention the mobilisation which makes bridging these distances possible.
Besides the machines point out how able they are to transform nature.

In the last but one verse it is described which differences there are between humans and machines and which status they have in the world: they are more important and stronger than every human being, but they are no gods.
The poem finishes with a reminder that machines are transitory and after all created by humans.

At the beginning of the poem the rhythm is very regular and strong because of the cross rhyme and the metrical foot which illustrate the regular and monotonous work of the machines very onomatopoetically. This impression is underlined by the similar structure of the sentences, too.

When the machines describe the things they make possible the rhythm does not sound so disjointed any more but still very dynamic. At the end when there is a new aspect in the poem the rhythm changes again and becomes softer and more harmonic.

These formal observations reflect the content of the poem: Kipling describes the advantages of the industrial society at the beginning of the 20th century, before turning to the disadvantages. Due to his direct appeal to the reader it seems very lively when he describes how it is possible to communicate with a friend who lives very far away and needs help.

The next stanza is about the Mauretania, a big ocean liner which had its maiden voyage in 1907. During all these descriptions (for example: "and the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea") you get the impression that the writer is very impressed by all those inventions and improvements and that he is proud of living in an age of such a change in which it is even possible to transform nature assisted by machines.

But he also makes clear that machines are no human beings, because they have no soul ("We can neither love nor pity nor forgive"). Though the machines say that they are "greater than the peoples or the kings", Kipling underlines that they are not the Gods as many people thought in that time. In the last stanza the poet conveys to us that machines are transitory and that you should not forget that they are not individuals but human creations.

I like this poem, because it describes many aspects of the theme though it is not easy to understand that the new inventions of the industrial revolution were such a big change for the people of its time. But in my opinion Rudyard Kipling makes clear very well how fascinated he is by those developments. Maybe in this way he could have  convinced the sceptical people who were afraid of the revolution. So he shows an optimistic view of the world, which is very helpful in every age.   (I.Z., 11b, March 2005)

 

The poem by Rudyard Kipling still has a current importance

"The secret of the machines" was written by Rudyard Kipling at the beginning of the twentieth century. The poem is about the importance of machines in our lives. The author starts by describing how machines are created and wrought and says that they were taken from the ore-bed. They only need some water, coal and oil. Then R. Kipling enumerates the skills of machines, such as pulling, racing, flying or writing. In the third stanza he explains the ability of machines to transmit information across the world. This is followed by a depiction how brilliant ships can be. The fifth and sixth stanza tell us that machines can nearly do everything on earth if they get the exact instructions. Then the author makes clear that machines have no feelings and that the wrong handling of machines can be dangerous. At last he says that for all their power machines are only things which are invented by humans.

The first intention of Rudyard Kipling is to show the manifoldness of machines. He wants to clarify that the progress of machines is a good thing for the human kind. They make many things easier and facilitate the work of the humans, particularly during the time of industrialization, in which R. Kipling lived. The second intention is to express that a machine can never replace a human, because a machine cannot feel anything (lines 37 to 39). Besides he says that machines are only children of human’s brain (line 48) and through that he shows that humans control them. Machines are always dependent on humans. By choosing the headline "The secret of the machines" the author also wants to clarify that machines also have secrets, maybe weaknesses, that they, as mentioned before, cannot feel anything and that they are dependent on humans. At the time of industrialization surely many people said that machines were everything. So Rudyard Kipling wanted to explain to such people that machines possess some, maybe many advantages, but they cannot do everything and least of all they cannot compensate nature. This you can gather from the last stanza.

In my opinion the poem is very interesting, because it constitutes all the advantages of machines and coevally it makes clear that humans stand above the machines. As we have seen in the development of the world there are many problems due to technical progress. For example, isolation is one of those problems. People have no friends and sit at the computer the whole day. Another problem is the danger of machines. In history there were some disasters, for example in 1986 in Tschernobyl, where many people died because of radioactivity. R. Kipling describes this danger in his poem, when he says in line 40 "if you make a slip in handling us you die". I have come to the conclusion that the poem by Rudyard Kipling still has a current importance today and that for all advantages there are also disadvantages when using machines.  (D.W., 11b, March 2005)

 

 
 

 
Other websites of our Department of English

If you are doing an interesting project let us know

 
www.gymnasiumsteglitz.de
Gymnasium Steglitz, 12169 Berlin, Heesestraße 15
Tel.: 030/9395-1937, Fax: 030/9395-1939

All rights reserved! © 2000-2005