Talk:The Ballad of East and West

Blood Fueds
I was too hasty in making a correction, but perhaps the significance of the penultimate line is not an end to blood fueds 'per se' but, rather, another example of the meaning of the third and fourth lines. (Another because it is the relationship between the Colonel's son and Kamal that is at the heart, and Kamal's son is only window dressing.) To wit, perhaps the point is that the act of joining the Guides has trumped the bloodline in Kamal's son. Thus, a man's actions weigh more heavily than his birth.Czrisher (talk) 02:05, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

For what it’s worth, I agree with the second reading above. The notion of blood feuds within the Guides was a startling note, totally foreign to the vision the poem creates for me, which is one of mutual respect between honorable people of deeply differing culture. I am completely out of contact with any world in which this poem could be construed as relevant to a flat Earth! I don’t see it as Wikipedia’s job to teach elementary geography, but if the situation is as bad as the comment below indicates, it is consistent not just with the enstupiding of the US, but with a deliberate long-term program to discourage the development of critical/analytical thinking (by delaying the acquisition of reading skill past the optimum period). This, as we are learning, has unpleasant political consequences. I don’t see what we can do about it here, except support Wikipedia! ferren (talk) 16:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Misconceptions
There would be some value in a section on common misconceptions about the poem. For example, people often quote the first two lines as though the protagonist is a proponent of a flat earth, since east and west do in fact meet on the far side of a spherical planet. (I don't have references, but my impression is that when the lines are quoted it is almost always in this context.) Also, people seem to quote the poem as though it has the status of infallible scripture, either in their own minds or (more often) in those of their intellectual opponents, and that is a phenomenon worth accounting for. 14.2.94.93 (talk) 23:16, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Apalling summary
I tried to fix the summary of the poem, which made some mistakes about it (article stated Colonel's son offered the mare as a gift to Kamal when the poem pretty clearly states that he reiterates his demand to have the mare returned; or that he swore blood brotherhood with Kamal himself when I think it is obvious that he swears it to Kamal's son). It doesn't seem right to me that the summary was almost as long as the poem itself. It's more like an English lesson for non-native speakers, which could be valuable but I think belongs elsewhere, especially as certain serious errors were allowed to remain on this page for almost a year. I don't think Wikipedia is made for subjective tasks like interpreting poetry. But I'm not enough of a Wikipedian to know how much I should delete from the plot summary. I welcome others to do some more pruning. A5 (talk) 05:25, 30 July 2018 (UTC)