The Blind Men and the Elephant

Originally published in 1872 in the pages of Harper’s, a popular New York City magazine, John Godfrey Saxe’s “The Blind Men and the Elephant” upcycled a Buddhist parable from five centuries before the birth of Christ. Although versions of the story have appeared across more than a millennium, Saxe’s riff on the ancient parable took as its starting point his era’s often contentious debate over the existence of God, given the rise of the new sciences that challenged and even revoked deeply-held beliefs about the Christian God. In Saxe’s retelling, a gathering of blind men struggles to understand an elephant, each touching a single part of the great creature, unable to perceive the animal in its totality—thus, none of the blind men can entirely perceive the elephant, each too-content with their limited perception. Within the established tradition of popular Gilded Age poetry that accepted the position of the poet as a source of wisdom and the function of poetry to teach, “The Blind Men and the Elephant” taught its culture the limits of any single religion’s perception of God and the importance of tolerance of others’ views when dealing with such a grand reality that no one actually understands.

Poet Biography

Born in a remote farming village in northern Vermont in 1816, John Godfrey Saxe was part of the second generation of distinctly American poets, a generation that took as its model the Fireside Poets, a confederation of writers and philosophers, centered around Boston, that included, among others, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and William Cullen Bryant. They were dubbed the Fireside Poets because their popular works were often recited not only by schoolchildren in classrooms but by families gathered in their parlors by the fireside.

His father a wealthy miller active in local government, Saxe had great expectations. Early on a precocious reader who found in his father’s vast library an introduction to the poetry of Antiquity, most notably Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal, Saxe attended Middlebury College, about two hours south of his home, then as now a prestigious center for liberal arts education. He graduated in 1839 and immediately stood for admission to the bar.

Although he committed himself to practicing the law and assisting his older brother in maintaining their family’s thriving mill business, Saxe could never ignore his love of the great works of Antiquity, particularly Juvenal’s satires. Seeing all about him evidence of the stumbling government inefficiencies and cultural embarrassments typical of a nation just finding its identity, Saxe maintained a second career, penning satires directed against different facets of New England culture and government. The poems were carefully sculpted, much like the Roman verses he admired and the British Neo-Classical poets who had drawn similarly from the ancient models. As Saxe’s poetry began to appear in both New York and Boston literary periodicals, his reputation grew. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Saxe was in demand along the Lyceum circuit, an archipelago of theaters in towns and universities where poets, writers, and journalists would entertain large audiences with readings of their works.

A passionate advocate for states’ rights, Saxe attempted unsuccessfully twice to run for governor of Vermont on a controversial platform that advocated a state’s right to maintain enslaved people. Humiliated by his second defeat (by a landslide), Saxe moved to upstate New York. He spent most of the Civil War in Albany, publishing occasional verses but maintaining a low public profile.

After the war, Saxe’s life took a deep spiral as close members of his family died, including his brother and five of his six children. Saxe grew increasingly despondent, dwelling on difficult questions about the meaning of life, finding his conventional Methodist upbringing of little use. It was during this time that Saxe completed “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” which quickly became his best-known work. Shortly after its appearance, Saxe suffered massive head trauma after a fall from a railroad car on a reading tour in West Virginia. He returned to New York but never fully recovered, a difficult process made more complicated when his wife died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1879. Saxe would live nearly a decade after his wife’s death, living in virtual seclusion in Albany under the care of his remaining son. Despite his once staggering popularity, Saxe died in relative obscurity, mourned mostly in his adopted New York state, his reputation resting largely on a single work, “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”

Poem Text

It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,    

Who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind),  

That each by observation, might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant, and, happening to fall 

Against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl:  

"God bless me! but the elephant, is nothing but a wall!"

The second feeling of the tusk, cried: "Ho! what have we here, 

So very round and smooth and sharp? To me tis mighty clear, 

This wonder of an elephant, is very like a spear!"

The third approached the animal, and, happening to take,

The squirming trunk within his hands, "I see," quoth he, 

The elephant is very like a snake!"

The fourth reached out his eager hand, and felt about the knee: 

"What most this wondrous beast is like, is mighty plain," quoth he;  

"Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree."

The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, said; "E'en the blindest man 

Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can,  

This marvel of an elephant, is very like a fan!"

The sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope, 

Than, seizing on the swinging tail, that fell within his scope,  

"I see," quothe he, "the elephant is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long, 

Each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong, 

Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,    

Tread on in utter ignorance, of what each other mean,

And prate about the elephant, not one of them has seen!

Saxe, John Godfrey. “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” 1872. All Poetry.

Summary

The poem tells a story about six blind men, “to learning much inclined” (Line 1), living in the region of Indostan (modern Hindustan) in northern India.

Each blind man approaches the creature and, in turn, touches the elephant’s side, tusk, trunk, knee, ear, and tail, deciding that he is sure he understands the elephant based on that limited fragment of information. In the closing stanza, the poem offers a lesson about religious tolerance and intra-cultural cooperation and communication when it comes to humanity’s inevitably feeble attempts to grasp the concept of God.

The six men have decided to define the nature of an elephant. Within the narrative, the blind men apparently know the word, but this is their first opportunity to understand the word through direct observation. Much like scientists (or theologians, for that matter), each blind man, curious and intrigued by the puzzle, believes that direct observation of a phenomenon will inevitably disclose its nature, despite the obvious irony here in that each man is blind.

One by one, the blind men approach the elephant. In turn, each encounters a single aspect of the great animal and believes that this limited perception somehow defines the entire animal. The first, for instance, stumbles against the elephant’s “broad and sturdy side” (Line 5) and immediately determines this animal must be something like a wall. The second brushes against the sharp edge of the elephant’s tusk and pronounces that the elephant is like a spear. The third holds the elephant’s trunk and decides that the elephant is like a snake.

The fourth blind man reaches out and grasps the elephant’s thick and wrinkled knee, and he immediately decides that an elephant must be very much like a tree. The fifth blind man chances to touch the elephant’s ear: “E’en the blindest man / Can tell” (Lines 16-17) an elephant must surely be like a fan. Finally undeterred (and apparently unimpressed) by his friends’ analyses, the final blind man approaches the great animal. He happens to grab the animal’s slowly swinging tail and promptly decides that an elephant must certainly be like a rope.

The six blind men use their best powers of perception and problem-solving as they struggle to understand a single grand mysterious entity; each man is right in a limited way yet far from the reality of the elephant. Even collectively they manage to miss the big picture because they never respond to the other, too content to draw conclusions from a single limited perception.

The narrator closes the poem by offering a lesson: The blind men struggling to define the elephant are like different religions struggling to define God. In humanity’s millennial-long theological efforts to define God, each culture, in their perceptions “exceeding stiff and strong” (Line 23), are partly right but all “in the wrong” (Line 24). The poet argues that every religion, every perception of God, and every theology offered and defended are expressions of “utter ignorance” (Line 26) because no one has seen God or has any reliable, firsthand expertise about God.