Imperialism in Rudyard Kipling's Early Short Stories

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Rudyard Kipling was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907 and he was known as an avid supporter of imperialism. This study examines aspects of imperialism reflected in his early short stories about India written in the late 1880s--1890. His tales from India are a repository of imperial messages to contemporary Anglo-Indian readership.
The discussed short stories here are: "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," "Thrown Away," "At the End of the Passage," "Phantom Rickshaw," "Beyond Pale," "To Be Filed for Reference," "The Man Who Would Be King," "Without Benefit of Clergy" and "The Head of the District." Through analysis of the stories, the colonialist's nightmarish experiences in India provide readers with political allegories and lessons to heed in the process of Empire building and maintaining. His stories also warns the colonialist about the dangers of immersion into the native culture, which Kipling considers as having inescapable charms. The stories can be categorized into two parts: manifestations of infantile fear on the colonizer's individual level and those of collective wishes to control India and to justify British rule. The former aspects are related to fear of separation or of abandonment as Kipling himself experienced as a child; the latter closely reflects the fear of rebellion as the fearful memory of the Mutiny in 1857 still loomed over the consciousness of contemporary British at the time of his writing. Kipling reinforces in the stories that each Anglo-Indian should endure and work for the great cause of the Empire, no matter how hard the colonialist's hardships. He also glorifies the colonialist spirit as shown in "The Man Who Would Be King."