A study guide for Rudyard Kipling's "the Man Who Would Be King"

By Gale and Cengage

A study guide for Rudyard Kipling's "the Man Who Would Be King", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535832403

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11

The Man Who Would Be King

Rudyard Kipling

1888

Introduction

Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King is acknowledged as a masterpiece of short fiction, yet controversy has continued for a century about Kipling's place in the canon of English literature. First known as a young genius from the British colony of India, he fascinated his readers with his fresh tales of Anglo-Indian life when he arrived in London in 1889. Kipling became known as an apologist for the British Empire, explicitly in such poems as The White Man's Burden and Recessional. Even after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, the first Englishman to receive this honor, Kipling was hated by liberal critics of colonialism. Though he continued to publish and be read until his death in 1936, he came to be viewed as part of history rather than as part of literature as the British Empire broke up. Slowly, critics have begun to revive Kipling's reputation as an artist, citing his genius with language, compression, and ironic narrators. He is now accepted as a pioneer of the English short story.

The Man Who Would Be King was written and first published in India as part of the collection called The Phantom Rickshaw (1888). The twenty-three-year-old author took it with him to London. Original readers read it for the adventure and did not consider it as fantasy, for explorers like Sir James Brooke, the white rajah of Sarawak, had actually carved out such native kingdoms for themselves. Today, the story is often seen as a parable on imperialism. Its ambiguity allows it to be read both ways, as the justification of empire and as a criticism of it. A copy of the story can be found in The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories, published by Oxford World Classics in 2008.

Author Biography

Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India, to Alice MacDonald Kipling and John Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor, artist, writer, and professor at an architectural school in Bombay. As a child, Kipling spoke better Hindi than English, a fact that may have prompted his parents to send him at age five, and his sister Trix, age three, to England, while they remained in India. Anglo-Indians often sent their children away from the heat and disease of India and the influence of Indian servants. Kipling felt abandoned when he had to live with Captain and Mrs. Holloway in Portsmouth, England. Kipling named their home The House of Desolation. While there, he became nearsighted and suffered a nervous breakdown from cruel treatment. This left permanent emotional scars that colored his writing.