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.
