Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King"

1891 portrait of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) by John Collier (1850-1934)

Rudyard Kipling's story, "The Man Who Would Be King," discussed at our meeting last Monday, the 22nd, has more than first meets the eye.  It tells of a journey of two ex-patriot Englishmen in British India, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan, to Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. Once there, Dravot and Carnehan are bent on making themselves kings.

They accomplish their goal through "luck and pluck."  Dravot picks up native tongues readily.  He breaks the neck of a man who attempts to rob them.  They organize the locals into militias, encourage the building of bridges to knit diverse clans together, and engage in political machinations Machiavelli would have admired.

When they discover elements of freemasonry in the beliefs and rituals of the locals, they exploit it to consolidate their power.  Dravot concedes that luck also plays a part, when a symbol on Dravot's apron turns out to be identical to the one on the underside of the square stone he had selected as his "Master's chair."  After that ceremony they are considered semi-divine.

Later in the story, Dravot's decision to take a wife becomes the pair's undoing.  Carnehan says,

I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine secrets of a Master-Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-way down the hill, and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of the priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the King.

In the wedding ceremony, Dravot attempts to kiss his bride and gets bitten instead.  When blood is drawn, the Kafiristan people in attendance know the Englishmen are mortal.  Their cover is blown.  That's why Carnehan says later that in hindsight he wishes they had "explained about the loss of the genuine secrets" at the first "go-off."

Before the wedding, Carnehan also says "I saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking together too, and they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes."  By using the terms "whispers" and "corners of their eyes," Kipling gives the reader the clear implication that Dravot and Carnehan are being set up.