ABSTRACT
In Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” Peachey Carnehan and Daniel Dravot, two European adventurers, open up the kingdom of Kafiristan-“[b]y my reckoning,” as Dravot says, “it’s the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan.” The two British subjects in Kafiristan are drawn into “sweep[ing] the valley so there isn’t a bug in a blanket left!”1 Their grandiose exploits come to naught as they are ultimately consumed by their own avarice, personal ambition, and, above all, obliviousness to the demands of the “natives.” Even when he is revealed to be “[n]either God nor Devil but a man!” and in spite of Carnehan’s warning that “[t]his business is our Fifty-Seven,” Dravot obdurately proclaims that “[a]n Emperor am I [and] next year I shall be a Knight of the Queen.”2 This dream never materializes as he loses his life. His friend is scarred by the misadventure for as long as he lives.
