The man who would be king: 1. how do carnehan and dravot’s first encounters with kipling (the character) compare to their visit to kipling’s newspaper office together? what do you learn about carnehan and dravot through their actions? 2. what is revealed about the character of the narrator through his detailed description of his job as a journalist? what type of man does he seem to be? 3. what details from your reading explain why carnehan and dravot would want to travel to the wilderness of kafiristan? do you think their reasons are valid? 4. how do the physical descriptions of carnehan and dravot compare to their personalities? what significance do you think their physical appearance has in comparison to their plan? 5. what level of importance do carnehan and dravot place on their “contrack” with one another? how does this compare with the impression kipling (the character) has of them?

The Man Who Would Be King:

"The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) is a story by Rudyard Kipling about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was first published in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales (1888).[1] It also appeared in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1895), and numerous later editions of that collection. It has been adapted for other media a number of times.

Explanation:

1.:Three years earlier, Dravot and Carnehan had met Kipling under less than auspicious circumstances. After stealing Kipling's pocket-watch, Carnehan found a masonic tag on the chain and, realising he had robbed a fellow Freemason, had to return it. At the time, he and Dravot were working on a plot to blackmail a local rajah, which Kipling foiled by getting the British district commissioner to intervene. In a comic relief turn, Carnehan obliquely blackmails the commissioner in order to avoid deportation.

2. :In 1885 in India, while working late at night in his newspaper office, the journalist Rudyard Kipling is approached by a ragged, seemingly crazed derelict who reveals himself to be Peachy Carnehan, an old acquaintance. Carnehan tells Kipling the story of how he and his comrade-in-arms Danny Dravot, ex-sergeants of the British Army who had become adventurers, travelled far beyond India into the remote land of Kafiristan.

3. :Frustrated at the lack of opportunities for lucrative criminal mischief in an India becoming more civilised and regulated, partly through their own hard efforts as soldiers, and with little to look forward to in England except petty jobs, the two turn up at Kipling's office with an audacious plan. Forsaking India, they will head with twenty rifles and ammunition to Kafiristan, a country virtually unknown to Europeans since its conquest by Alexander the Great. There they will offer their services to a ruler and then help him to conquer his neighbours, but proceed to overthrow him and loot the country. Kipling, after first trying to dissuade them, gives Dravot his masonic tag as a token of brotherhood.

4.Daniel Dravot, or Dan as he is known to his friends, is a large red-haired Englishman with ambition. Something of a jack-of-all-trades and a soldier of fortune, he is intelligent and quick to learn languages. He is also a Freemason, having advanced to the third degree, and knows the customary grips and words by which men of that order recognize one another. At times he travels in disguise, pretending to be a reporter or a mad priest in order to get operating capital.

An Englishman and third-degree Freemason like his friend Daniel Dravot, Peachey Carnahan is a second-in-command throughout the story. He is not as large or physically imposing as his friend Dan, although he has a unique identifying feature: black eyebrows that come together at the middle of his forehead with no gap above the nose.

Peachey tries to be honest, or at least a man of his word, but is not as intelligent as Dan. He signs a contract with Dan, agreeing to abstain from alcohol and women until such time as they both become kings in Kafiristan.

5.The narrator of the story is an Indian journalist in 19th century India—Kipling himself, in all but name. Whilst on a tour of some Indian native states he meets two scruffy adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan. Softened by their stories, he agrees to help them in a minor errand, but later he regrets this and informs the authorities about them—preventing them from blackmailing a minor rajah. A few months later the pair appear at his newspaper office in Lahore. They tell him of a plan they have hatched. They declare that after years of trying their hands at all manner of things, they have decided that "India is not big enough for them". They plan to go to Kafiristan and set themselves up as kings. Dravot will pass as a native and, armed with twenty Martini-Henry rifles, they plan to find a king or chief to help him defeat enemies. Once that is done, they will take over for themselves. They ask the narrator for the use of books, encyclopedias and maps of the area—as a favour, because they are fellow Freemasons, and because he spoiled their blackmail scheme. They also show him a contract they have drawn up between themselves which swears loyalty between the pair and total abstinence from women and alcohol.

the transfiguration of jesus is an event reported in the new testament when god: the meeting place of the temporal and the eternal, with jesus himself as the connecting point,

pls follow me

the first proposition is to question economic materialism and victorian christianity. the lines are:

“it moves us not.—great god! i'd rather be

a pagan suckled in a creed outworn; ”

wordsworth is stating that nature no longer interests mankind, that the latter is not “moved” by it and explains that ancient western paganism had a more positive attitude concerning nature since it lacked the perv erted judaeo-christian interpretation of having received the world and all its animals and elements from god to use as we , instead of humans actually being not only part of nature but its wardens, meant to appreciate it and protect it.

the next lines are:

“so might i, standing on this pleasant lea,

have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

have sight of proteus coming from the sea;

or hear old triton blow his wreathed horn.”

wordsworth here make it very clear that by actually looking and contemplating nature, human beings would reconnect with happiness, serenity and purpose. the use of mythological figures is quite evocative as well, proteus is a greek mythological god of the changing sea. he personifies the sea that changes, which symbolizes the way nature changes and inevitably can change to be destructive not only due to natural causes but to human pollution. furthermore, the sea is even more symbolic since all life originated in the sea so it is not only our past but our future since no life form in our planet can survive without water and if all water is destroyed in earth all life will be gone as well.

he then uses triton which is symbolic of the synthesis of both nature and mankind. triton is a mythological greek god that has the upper body of a man and the lower body of a fish (a merman). this human fish duality evokes the fact that humans are not only human but also part of nature, the fish tail representing nature. the main attribute of this god was that he used a conch shell as a horn to calm the roaring seas. in other words, triton uses nature through science for the benefit of human sailors who risk death during tempests. with the use of such metaphor, wordworth is conveying the message that human technology   is supposed to use nature to preserve nature and thereby humanity as well.