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 unique approach to man vs. society, which is combined with and arises from elements of man vs. self. In the characters of Dravot and Carnahan, you have a pair of over-ambitious adventurers whose self-image and confidence ultimately exceeds their actual competency. This self-aggrandizement tends to warp their understanding of the world and the events surrounding them. See the following excerpt, taken from early in the narrative, in Carnahan's own words, as he voices frustrations with the state of the world around him:
We have been all over India . . . and we have decided that India isn't big enough for such as us. . . . The country isn't half worked out...
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because they that governs it won't let you touch it.They spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can't lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the Government saying—"Leave it alone and let us govern." Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isn't crowded and can come to his own.
They express here a grievance that government and society acts to hold them back (this is man vs. society), but it should be noted that this resentment is fed by their own distorted self-image. Later on in the story, this same sense of distortion takes on lethal effect. When Dravot sets himself up as a God-King, he becomes swept up in his own grandiosity, with disastrous consequences for the tricksters.
An example of a conflict is the character vs. character conflict between the reporter and the clownsPeachey Carnehan and Daniel Dravot.
The narrator is a real reporter, and he meets Carnehan and Dravot, who are pretending to be reporters. The narrator is trying to be respectable, and the other two are just buffoons. They get it into their heads that they want to be kings, and drag the narrator into it.
Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and might … get themselves into serious difficulties.
Of course, they do get into difficulties. The narrator does not like being involved. He finds them friends, but at the same time is willing to turn them in because he is afraid of what they might do. They do get into trouble as they become the kings of a little African country. Unfortunately, they do so by pretending to be gods and once the natives realize they are not, they kill Dravot and seriously injure Carnehan
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