Content provided in partnership with
"The Mark of the Beast": Rudyard Kipling's apocalyptic vision of empire
Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1996 by Paul Battles
As a way of knowing, the truths of colonial discourse utterly fail Fleete, Strickland, and the narrator, and thus they are unable to adequately cope with the events that confront them. The narrative itself places a high value on knowledge, because action--the exercise of power--depends on proper knowledge. The narrator stresses that Fleete's "knowledge of natives was limited, of course" (216-17); his ignorance has disastrous consequences. The narrator even suggests such ignorance can be fatal: "Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now; he died in a rather curious manner, which has been described elsewhere" (216); the juxtaposition of drawing an "incorrect inference" and Dumoise's death suggests that the former caused the latter. In contrast, Strickland understands a great deal about India and about Fleete's transformation; the narrator says that Strickland "knows as much of the natives of India as is good for any man" (216) and that he "hates being mystified by natives, because his business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons" (230). The last sentence especially makes clear the narrator's awareness of the connection between power and knowledge. But in the end, even Strickland's knowledge is imperfect; he cannot fully explain Fleete's transformation. His hypothesis, that the Silver Man bewitched Fleete to punish him for defiling Hanuman's statue, is not entirely satisfactory. Certainly it does not penetrate to the heart of the mystery of the Silver Man.
- More Articles of Interest
- Rudyard Kipling: A Study of the Short Fiction. - book reviews
- Sorrow and the redemptive role of fate: Kipling's "On Greenhow Hill"
- Homes with light, space.(Friday Home Guide)(Maryland New Homes)
- Top of the food chain. (short story)
- Book review: Kipling was empire's allegorist, not its apologist
In the Preface to Life's Handicap, in which "The Mark of the Beast" is collected, Kipling offers both a rationale for Strickland's incomplete understanding and a possible way of approaching the mystery of Hanuman and the Silver Man. Kipling discusses the impetus for writing the stories collected in the volume (in all probability purely fictional but nevertheless of thematic interest): an old holy man named Gobind living in a northern Indian monastery, the Chubara of Dunni Bhagat. Kipling states that
[Gobind's] tales were true, but not one in twenty could be printed in
an English book, because the English do not think as natives
do . . . native and English state at each other across great gulfs of
miscomprehension.
Kipling's English audience cannot fully understand Gobind's stories, because like Fleete and Dumoise they lack the cultural framework within which they are situated; even Strickland in the end remains an Englishman. Yet Kipling does suggest that those who do have knowledge of the proper cultural framework will be able to understand the stories in Lifes Handicap; most relevant to "The Mark of the Beast," both as a story about the Hindu god Hanuman and as a tale inspired by an Indian holy man, is the religious framework, i.e., Hinduism. Indeed, it can be demonstrated that a proper understanding of Hanuman's nature will solve the mystery of what really happened to Fleete.
