Neither Gods nor Kings: Kipling’s Imperialistic Blinders in “The Man Who Would Be King”
Joel Thomas
1070 Words
Help Received: Peer Review
Rudyard Kipling’s story “The Man Who Would Be King” describes the travails of the two Anglo-Indian “loafers” Patrick “Peachy” Carnehan and Daniel Dravot in the mythical Afghan land of Kafiristan, where they venture in order to create an empire. This empire is eventually their downfall, and leads to the death of Dravot and the crucifixion of Carnehan, who lives only long enough to come back to India and tell his tale to the narrator of the story. In his article “Irony, Freemasonry, and Humane Ethics in Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’”, Paul Fussell makes the case that the story is not merely a tale of imperialistic hijinks, but a complex and playful tale, based in Christian and Masonic ethics, about the nature of kingship and worldly status, as well as the ethical implications of colonialism (Fussell 232-233). While this is an attractive thesis, the evidence found in the story itself makes it seriously unconvincing, and paints a picture of a Kipling who, while he does criticize some instances of perceived excess on the part of the adventurers, does nothing the challenge the underlying assumptions that make those excesses possible.
Carnehan and Dravot set off on their adventure simply out of a desire to become kings for the sake of being kings. “[W]e have decided that India isn’t big enough for such as us,” Carnehan tells the narrator, saying later that they are not “little men” and so “[t]herefore, we are going away to be kings.” (Kipling 7) Whatever they may turn out to be, Carnehan and Dravot start the venture as consummate egoists, focused solely on their personal gain. Dravot lays out his goal explicitly when he states that his goal is to gain the trust of a local ruler and then “subvert the king and establish a Dy-nasty.” (Kipling 7). There is a notable absence on the part of Carnehan and Dravot of any thought as to whether their cause is even remotely morally justifiable, and this lack of seriousness never seems to be questioned. The picture at the start of the story, then, is of the two would-be kings as the stereotypical greedy colonialists who see native populations as nothing but resources to be exploited and subjugated in their rush for power, lacking any sort of moral sensibility beyond their contract to abstain from women and liquor until they are kings.
When Carnehan and Dravot reach Kafiristan, they establish control over the native population in a show of force, killing members of one of two warring tribes, then intimidating the people they have saved. They then establish their status as kings and gods by waging war and building an empire in the valley of Kafiristan, establishing as their cult a system of pseudo-Masonic rituals, with pure luck seemingly as much of a factor as any skill or personal quality. Kingship in the story, then, cannot quite be said to be established by competence, according to Fussell’s description of Kipling’s “law”, but any competence the would-be kings possess is in simple domination of simpler tribes, even if they do seem to be white, and their only right to the crowns of Kafiristan is the right of conquest (Fussell 229). This right never seems to be challenged in any meaningful way in the story, and certainly no blame seems to be assigned to Carnehan and Dravot for their early actions before the excesses that Fussell says Kipling condemns as crude and anti-Masonic, seemingly undermining the idea that the story, while it may be humorous in parts, is seriously challenging or parodying the underlying imperialist assumptions of Kipling’s time (Fussell 230-31).
The fall of Carnehan and Dravot, then, by Fussell’s reading of Kipling, is simply a matter of them overstepping their bounds rather than any inherent flaw in their quest (Fussell 230-231). When Dravot demands a wife, he is making a rash decision, but it is portrayed as a violation of his contract with Carnehan, an instance of a ruler letting ego outweigh competence, not a symptom of a deeper problem. Fussell calls Dravot’s speech about making an empire childish and unworthy of him, but it is unclear how it is any more delusional or infantile than the original plan to go to Kafiristan and become kings in the first place (Fussell 230-231). When Dravot is killed and Carnehan is run out of Kafiristan, it is hard to feel any sympathy or admiration for the two as men, as Fussell suggests Kipling felt, and any admiration of their achievements in their short time as rulers would have to overlook the vast web of violence and deception on which their kingdom is built.
This argument coincides with that of Jeffrey Myers, who, in his article “The Idea of Moral Authority in the Man Who Would Be King”, concludes that Kipling’s heroic, Christ-tinged depictions of Carnehan and Dravot, especially the death of Dravot and the torture of Carnehan “obscur[es] the moral issues of their past behavior as ‘kings’ – their greed, exploitation, despotism and murder” (Myers 723). Kipling’s criticism of the two focuses on their excesses, while ignoring the fact that these excesses are essential parts, not byproducts, of the venture in the first place. Kipling does not seem to realize that conquest of a foreign land and the subjugation of its people is, by nature, a bloody, destructive business, not a caper, and it is this repeated failing that makes it impossible to take any moral lessons Kipling tries to insert in the story seriously.
In “The Man Who Would Be King”, then, it is impossible to separate the achievements of Carnehan and Dravot from the violent and fraudulent means by which they achieve them. Because of this, it is hard to argue, like Fussell does, that the Kipling of “The Man Who Would Be King” is a different, more humane Kipling than the one who would later become a stalwart defender of unlimited imperialism, or that the two characters have any claim at all to heroism. Kipling’s law, while it may take into account competence, does nothing to address questions of whether those who can should. Kipling’s main criticism of the two would-be kings, then, is not that the job should never have been done at all, but simply that the job was done badly, and therefore fails to carry moral weight.
Bibliography
Fussell, Paul. “Irony, Freemasonry, and Humane Ethics in Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King.’” ELH, vol. 25, no. 3, 1958, pp. 216–233.
Kipling, Rudyard. The Man Who Would Be King: Edited by Jan Montefiore, Penguin Books, 2011.
Meyers, Jeffrey. “The Idea of Moral Authority in The Man Who Would Be King.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 8, no. 4, 1968, pp. 711–723.