The Man Who Would Be King Literary Elements

Adventure, morality fable

India and "Kafiristan", a fictional region of Afghanistan, mid to late 1800s

The primary narrator is an English newspaperman who recounts his impression of two adventurers on their way to seek their fortune in Kafiristan. However the story of what befalls the two is told by one of the returning survivors, Peachey Carnehan, who tells his story as a tale within a tale. Both speak in the first person.

The mood is dark and pessimistic.

The two protagonists are Daniel Dravot and Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan. There is no named antagonist, except Dravot's arrogance and ambition cause him to sabotage himself and act as his own antagonist.

The major source of conflict in the story is Dan's desire for power and his determination to rise far above his level of competence and understanding. He and Peachey lie in order to advance their interests, and when the lie is discovered their real troubles begin.

The climax of the story occurs during Dan's wedding, when his terrified and unwilling bride bites him hard enough to draw blood. The sight of this blood convinces all present that Dan is not a god, but an ordinary man. Since the local people are already extremely angry for a variety of reasons, this deception is enough to make them turn against Dan.

When Peachey begins to tell his tale, he speaks of "poor Dan" who refused to take advice. He makes rambling, confused statements about how Dan died, establishing at the beginning that the two of them had come to misfortune.

Before the disastrous wedding ceremony, a local man the protagonists know as Billy Fish tells them: "if you can induce the
King to drop all this nonsense about marriage, you’ll be doing him and me and yourself a great service." By proceeding with the wedding anyway, Dan sets off a course of events that costs him his life.

There are frequent references to Freemasonry throughout the story. Grips, words, symbols, and various details of the temple such as black and white squares on the floor are part of the ongoing discussion. The fact Peachey and Dan are master Masons is relevant to the plot.

Dan blends occult symbols from Mongolia and elsewhere, such as spilling milk on the ground near dead people, to overawe the people in Kafiristan. However, the imagery related to insanity, in the form of scraps of cloth, rags, beggars, and poverty is also present throughout the story.

Peachey and Dan are not wealthy, but nor are they paupers. They start out with the intention of becoming kings, but paradoxically both men lose everything they have, including their sanity and their lives.

In this story, friends stick by one another so as to strengthen both, but every time somebody does this it not only fails to strengthen the person in trouble, but it causes the troubled person's punishment to fall on the friend likewise.

The rise and fall of Dan Dravot can be construed as representing the rise and fall of colonialism as a whole. Kipling lived long enough to see that the British and other European powers' hold on the developing nations they conquered was not always so secure as Europeans liked to believe. He did not live to see India win its independence, but he no doubt read accounts of the Boxer Rebellion in China. His writing, therefore, is full of ambiguous statements that can be taken as deliberate satire and criticism of Eurocentric colonial occupation.

The people of Kafiristan are presented as a collective whole as opposed to as individuals, particularly during and after the climactic wedding scene. This is an example of metonymy.

Synecdoche occurs chiefly when Dan presents himself as a king and asserts that the marriage of a king is a matter of state. Like Louis XIV of France, who famously equated himself with the state, Dan asserts that he, himself, represents Kafiristan. The irony of a foreign Englishman making such a statement is not apparent to him.

To Peachey, who loses his mind during the last events in Kafiristan, the black mountains appear to dance and rumble, especially at night, and to try to fall on him.