Poem: I Stood Upon a High Place by Stephen Crane

 I stood upon a high place,

And saw, below, many devils

Running, leaping,

and carousing in sin.

One looked up, grinning,

And said, "Comrade! Brother!" 

“I Stood upon a High Place” is a very interesting poem. In my opinion, the poem suggests the connection between civilisation and savagery. The title of the poem, along with the first line, is “I stood upon a high place”. This suggests that the person is above everybody else, who is sinister, and therefore means that the person is better and more civilised in behaviour. Devils are below the speaker, which gives the impression that evil thoughts and savagery are of a lower tier, not as important as order and civilised behaviour. Despite the fact that savagery does exist in everyone, as Golding suggests in the Lord of the Flies, I feel that the civilised behaviour that society has conditioned in us should take over this savagery, so that people can be organised and not chaotic. The last two lines of the poem, where a devil looks up, “grinning”, and says “Comrade! Brother!” suggests that the innate savagery in mankind is still present, because it is still able to connect with people, despite their conditioning from society.

This is similar to the characters of Ralph and Piggy in the Lord of the Flies. They are the two most rational boys of the group. They tend to see themselves as above the other boys, especially the ill-disciplined littluns and the power-hungry hunters. Because Ralph and Piggy are more rational and smarter than the rest in the sense that they are able to prioritise the right things for the boys on the island, they think they are the most civilised. They feel the hunters and the littluns have overcome the conditioning of society, and have turned to savagery, thus not prioritising rescue over hunting pigs.

However, later on in the novel, Ralph becomes excited in hunting for pigs, because he has also fallen to the trap of savagery. Why is this? As the poem suggests, savagery is innate. The man is only human, and is a sinner, like all other people. The rest of the boys simply fell into the trap of satisfying their own desires at their own will earlier than Ralph. Ralph believes that he is sophisticated enough to stay away from being savage, but the truth is, he is simply less savage than the rest.

          In the beginning, the boys felt that they were the best at everything and were the most civilised because they were British. Although it may not be wrong for them to say that the British are the best at everything, they still end up killing Piggy and Simon. Therefore, the theme of civilisation and savagery is heavily presented in this poem, and I can relate this to Ralph and Piggy, because they feel that they are under the protection of civilised behaviour, but their innate savage behaviour lurks in them, just that they do not realise this.

Poem from: 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-stood-upon-a-high-place-2/