Why rudyard kipling

Not least because, in spite of his fascination, I have to admit to not really knowing all that much about Kipling. I suspect in common with many of my generation, I have a confused jumble of ideas and prejudices about the man.

I know about The Jungle Book, of course. I watched the TV movie of Kim , as a child back in the s, when it seemed forever on British screens. This lack of real knowledge is vaguely embarrassing. It seems absurd to pretend to know and care about the development of English literature and to have read so little, to have understood so little, about such a major figure. I hope this month to overcome my ignorance for better or worse — and that you will join me.

Nobel Prizes Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in , for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. See them all presented here. Select the category or categories you would like to filter by Physics.

Economic Sciences. Post-Colonial theory and English Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Cooper, Alice Page.

Rudyard Kipling. Kipling, Rudyard. A Book of Words. London: Macmillian and Co. Limited, Moses, Michael Valdez. The Novel and the Globalization of Culture. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, Tompkins, J. The Art of Kipling. England: University of Nebraska Press, Thompson, Jon. Fiction, Crime, and Empire clues to Modernity and Postmodernism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, Further Works to Consult Allen, Charles. Kipling Sahib : India and the making of Rudyard Kipling.

London : Little, Brown Havholm, Peter. Much of the tension in the Jungle Books arises from the conflict between the Law of the Jungle—with its insistence on hierarchy and individual responsibility—and those who seek to undermine it, especially the tiger Shere Khan, a solitary, ruthless predator, and the mindless, pleasure-seeking Monkey People.

In later years, Kipling never discouraged readers from finding in the Jungle Books a political allegory. In one interpretation, the Law of the Jungle is the Raj, and the Monkey People are the hapless Indians whom the British came to civilize. Or, Kipling also suggested, you could see the Monkey People as an indictment of American populists, and their habit of promising everything and accomplishing nothing.

The other great theme of the Jungle Books is that of personal growth through manly, stressful adventure in the wild. This idea found a ready enthusiast in Theodore Roosevelt, then a civil-service commissioner in Washington. He and Kipling became friends and would visit the zoo together where Roosevelt liked watching the bears, while Kipling preferred the beavers.

Even before Kipling settled here, he was immensely popular in America. Two towns in Michigan named themselves after him: Rudyard and Kipling. Kipling interpreted the diplomatic spat as a personal affront, and felt betrayed by his adopted home. The last straw came the following spring, when Kipling got into a dispute with his brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier. But he and the Kiplings did not get along—among other things, he thought his sister put on airs—and one afternoon a drunken Beatty came across Kipling, who was out riding his bicycle, and threatened to blow his brains out.

Overreacting, as he so often did, Kipling had him arrested. The subsequent hearing attracted national attention, with reporters cramming into the Brattleboro town hall, and, in the opinion of most, the jokey, convivial local fellow came off far better than the stuffy, irascible Englishman. Kipling was so mortified that he decided he had no choice except to move back to England. Three years later, the Kiplings gave America another chance.