NCERT Solutions For Class 9 English Poem Chapter 6: No Men are Foreign

Poet James Kirkup invokes Universal Brotherhood and Fraternity's idea in his poem "No Men are Foreign". The poet reminds his readers that all humans are connected through a common link of humanity. All men are made of flesh and blood, none unlike the other. All men beneath their garbs are the same. They breathe the same air walking on this earth. The men of this world may speak different languages, but they toil the same with their hands. They see the same Sun, sky, and water. The sights they see when they open their eyes are the sight shared with others as well. The poet tells his readers that the concept of "foreign" has been created by dividing men with boundaries drawn on earth. So if one erases these boundaries, then the concept of "foreign" will cease to exist as well. In a world full of hatred, the poet pleads that it is equivalent to hating yourself when someone teaches you to hate others.

Composed in the setting of the war-ridden post-colonial world, the poet writes when men take up arms to hurt their "brothers," they defile the "human earth". The poet states that it is the violence that we subject others "outrage the innocence" present in this world.

The post-colonial poem invokes the theme that all men are alike; if we look at them beyond their clothes, language, and boundaries, we are the ones who differentiate ourselves from the others giving birth to the idea of "foreign men". Even men speaking different languages express the same emotions. Hence we should differentiate between men as the poet states in the last line, "no men are foreign, and no countries strange".