The Man Who Would Be King

An underlying theme in "The Man Who Would Be King" is a comparison between the imperialism of the British Empire and the motives and exploits of Dravot and Carnehan. In this sense, the story takes...

This unlikely narrative is actually based upon the real-life exploits of the Englishman James Brooke, who became the first white Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo, as well as the travels of the American...

Dravot's goal with his people that he has gained power over is defined after he has taken his position as king. He says, "I'll make a damned fine Nation of you, or I'll die in the making!" Dravot's...

Rudyard Kipling's narration in "The Man Who Would Be King" is a reflection of his own beliefs at the time. Since the story is told by the survivor Carnehan, Kipling's unnamed narrator asks...

The short story "The Man Who Would Be King" by Rudyard Kipling takes place in India during the British Raj. A British journalist, the narrator, meets an adventurer named Daniel Dravot, who asks him...

The two "imposters" in this text are Dravot and Peachey, the two men who come to the narrator and tell him their curious tale of how they manage to become rulers of a small country by convincing...

Dravot's fatal mistake, as Peachey is all too keen to point out, is that he wants to take for himself a wife. However, as he finds out, he is a victim of his own success in this regard. He has...

The fact that Peachey and Danny are both Masons is what ultimately enables them to command power over Kafiristan after a somewhat rocky start. Some of the villagers have already decided that the...

We tend to categorize conflict into one of several different types: man vs. man, man vs. self, man vs. society, or man vs. nature. When reading "The Man Who Would Be King," I think there's a very...

"The Man Who Would Be King" is a famous short story by Rudyard Kipling about two men, Carnehan and Dravot, who try to set themselves up as kings among the native peoples of Afghanistan. While they...

The Inescapability of Reality Living in a world of fantasy might be fun for a while, but, at some point, one will have to return to reality. Dravot and Carnehan seem of larger-than-life...

The Narrator The narrator, an unnamed newspaper correspondent, is the story's main protagonist. He initially meets Peachey Carnehan on a train, where he learns of the strange man's propensity for...

The plot of the story involves a reporter who meets two men pretending to be reporters who want to become king of some small insignificant country. The narrator is a real reporter, but he comes...

The words Kipling puts into the mouth of his protagonist, Dravot, are a reflection of racial and colonial attitudes at the time of his writing this story. Dravot has set himself up as a king,...

It is clear from the way that the narrator acts towards Carnehan and Dravot that these two characters before they set out to be kings are somewhat dubious and shady characters. This is revealed in...

Stylistically speaking, "The Man Who Would be King" represents an interesting departure from conventional first-person voice. Usually the idea (and the great strength) of first person narration is...

There is a great deal of acting, or role-playing, in this story. The unnamed narrator first meets Peachey Carnehan on a train, and Carnehan admits to pretending to be a journalist quite often. The...

According to Carnehan’s story, as recalled by the narrator, Dravot got to be king through a combination of frightening and manipulating the kingdom’s people. When Carnehan and Dravot arrived in the...

Rudyard Kipling's style in "The Man Who Would Be King" echoes the famous method of telling a story from someone else's perspective and "reporting" on it as an objective listener. In his era, it was...

The story begins with the narrator, a newspaper correspondent, meeting an odd man on the train. The man admits that he is pretending to be a correspondent for the same newspaper so that he gain...

I think that the theme of conquest is of primary importance to the Kipling novella. The idea that Carnehan and Dravot set out to "conquer" a country is a part of this. They do not seek to go to...

Author Rudyard Kipling never explains how the natives of Kafiristan came to acquire knowledge about Freemasonry in his short story "The Man Who Would Be King." We only know that the Kafirs have a...

One of the services that Carnehan and Dravot offer Kafiristan is military training so they can “vanquish” their enemies. Dravot seemed to realize that the people in Kafiristan were always fighting...