"The Man Who Be Be King" (1888) is a story by Rudyard Kipling about two British adventurers in British India who became king of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was first published in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales (1888). It also appeared in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1895), and many later editions of the collection. It has been adapted for other media several times.
Video The Man Who Would Be King
Ringkasan plot
The story narrator is an Indian journalist in 19th century India - Kipling himself, all but names. While on tour to several Indian states, he meets two troubled adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan. Fluenced by their stories, he agrees to help them in a small task, but then he regrets this and informs the authorities about them - preventing them from blackmailing a little king. A few months later, the couple appeared in the newspaper office in Lahore. They told him about the plan they had set. They claim that after years of trying their hands on everything, they have decided that "India is not big enough for them". They planned to go to Kafiristan and make themselves king. Dravot will graduate as a native and, armed with twenty Martini-Henry rifles, they plan on finding a king or head to help him defeat the enemy. Once that is done, they will take over for themselves. They asked the narrator to use books, encyclopaedias and maps of the area - as a favor, because they were fellow Freemasons, and because he ruined their extortion scheme. They also show contracts they make among themselves who swear allegiance between spouses and total abstinence from women and alcohol.
Two years later, on a hot summer night, Carnehan crept into the narrator's office. He was a broken man, a ragged paralyzed man in tattered clothes and he told a great story. Dravot and Carnehan succeeded in becoming kings: through dangerous mountains, finding unbelievers, gathering troops, taking over villages, and dreaming of building a united nation and even an empire. The infidels (unbelievers, not Muslims) are impressed by the rifle and lack of Dambot's fear of their idols, and calls him a god, reincarnation or a descendant of Alexander the Great. They show whiter skin than others from the area ("so fluffy and white and fair it just shakes hands with old friends") implying their ancient lineage to Alexander himself. The Gentiles practiced a form of Masonic ritual, and Dravot's reputation was increasingly cemented when he showed the knowledge of the Masonic secret that only the oldest priest remembered.
Their scheme was dashed, however, when Dravot (against Carnehan's suggestion) decided to marry a Gentile girl. Kingship goes to his head, he decides he needs a queen and then royal children. Frightened while marrying a god, the girl bites Dravot when she tries to kiss her during the wedding ceremony. Seeing him bleed, the priests cried that he was "Not God or Satan but man!" Most of the Gentiles turned against Dravot and Carnehan. Some of his men remained loyal, but the army defected and the two kings were arrested.
Dravot, wearing his crown, stands on a rope bridge over a ravine while the Gentile cut off his rope, and he falls to his death. Carnehan was crucified between two pine trees. When he survived this torture for a whole day, the infidels regarded him as a miracle and let him go. He begged to return to India.
As evidence of his story, Carnehan shows the narrator's head Dravot, still wearing a gold crown, which he vows will never sell it. Leaves Carnehan carry head. The next day the narrator saw him crawling along the road during the day, with his hat loose and mad. The narrator sends him to a local asylum. When he asked two days later, he learned that Carnehan had died from the sun. No items found with him.
Maps The Man Who Would Be King
Recognized sources
Kafiristan is recognized as a real place by at least one early Kipling scholar, Arley Munson, who in 1915 called it "a small piece of land in northeastern Afghanistan," though he mistakenly thinks "the only source of information is the account of Mahomedan traders who have entered the country "At that time, Kafiristan was completely removed from the map and renamed" Nuristan "in the conquest of 1895 by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, and it was soon forgotten by literary critics who, under the rule of the New Critic, read this story as allegory of the British Raj. The disappearance of Kafiristan was so complete that the 1995 New York Times article referred to it as "the remote mythical kingdom at the center of Kipling's story."
As New Historismism replaces New Criticism, scholars rediscover the history of Kafiristan's story, aided by the trail of sources left behind by Kipling himself, in the form of a narrator's publication given to Dravot and Carnehan.
- "The INF-KAN volume of EncyclopÃÆ'Â|dia Britannica ," which (in its ninth edition of 1882) contains the long "Sirafer" entry of Sir Henry Yule. The entry of Yule described Kafiristan as "the land of the high mountains, the dizziness paths, and the bridle of hair straps swinging over torrents, the narrow valleys that are hard to order, but wine, milk, and honey rather than agriculture." He incorporated Bellew's description of the Kafir informant as "almost indistinguishable from the English" and commented at length about the beauty of the infamous pagan lady.
- "Wood at Oxus Source," ie, Personal Narratives from Trips to Oxus River Source by Routes Indus, Kabul and Badakhshan (1841) by Captain John Wood ( 1811-1871), from which Dravot extracted route information.
- "The file from the United Services' Institute," accompanied by a directive, "reads what Bellew says," referring, no doubt, to 1879's "Kafristan [sic] and Gentile" Surgeon Major Henry Walter Bellew (1834-1892). This account, like Wood's, is largely based on the account of the second native traveler and "some short notice about this person and country scattered in the works of different native historians," because, as he noted, "to date, we has no account of this country and its inhabitants by every European tourist who has visited them. "The 29-page survey of history, manners, and customs is" unclear and inaccurate "as the narrator suggests, Bellew admits that" religion the unbelievers we know very little, "but noted that" the Gentile women have a world of widespread reputation of being a very beautiful being. "
- The narrator smokes "while people pour Raverty , Wood , maps and EncyclopÃÆ'Â|dia
Possible model
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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