/ssrg/ Short Story Reading Group: The Man Who Would Be King #2

Anyone finish reading yet? Still planning to read it?

>>8957568
I'm feeling really sad give me an hour.

>tfw the reading group you decided to do is the worst one
Well, the Iliad one might be worse off. We should probably just stop.

>>8957568

I'm halfway done

>>8957577
Ugh, too tired.

Anyways, I can discuss Ivan Ilyich.

I'll quickly say that the short story illustrates the difference between consciousness and proper understanding and that's the point Tolstoy is trying to get to you.
The widow "knows" she is trying to swindle his friend out of money, but she doesn't entirely understand it, thus her tears are real;
When his friends feel alive and feel that they will never die when they see Ivan dead it's a repetition of that, and you'll find it again throughout the novel. Finally, Tolstoy completes the idea with Ivan going in his last moments from knowing God existed to actually understanding it.
Good night.

>>8957605
This is the thread for Kipling.

>>8957610
I think it's fine to discussion previous stories, and encouraged to compare them.

>tfw your native army buds turn on you.

Felt bad for Peachy. Dan didn't seem to care much about the people, but Peachy seemed like he cared about Dan and his afghan village soldiers.

There isn't much to say about this story. It's just an outlandish adventure played out to full effect for entertainment.

The only aspect that was particularly interesting to me was Kipling's imperialistic ideals which shone through the entire story. It's deeply unpleasant to admit it, but certain cultures are lesser than others after all. A culture that promotes killing and rape (represented by the Indians and Afghans) is inferior to a culture that provides stability and education (represented by Britain).

The story is always sympathetic to the Brits -- after trying to bring civilisation to the Afghans, albeit with the ulterior motive of becoming kings, the two adventurers were subjected to tragic deaths. This theme of the white man bringing technology and civilisation to non-white, less developed civilisations is further expanded on in Kipling's poem The White Man's Burden:

Take up the White Man's burden, The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

Perhaps Kipling was the best person to consult on imperialism at the time, having lived in India for some 30 years. Judging from the detailed descriptions of social structures and sights in the short story, his time in India might have filled him with pity (and most likely disgust) for the native people which led to his ideas that it was the White Man's Burden, as the more advanced civilisation, to bring a stop to their barbaric ways.

will read before bed

>>8959301
finished
>tfw dravot is alpha as fuck and also redpilled

also i laughed pretty hard at 'carnehan of the eyebrows'

>>8959598

Dravot was a badass who seemed like some kind of Mohamed coming in and connecting all of the tribes, but obviously he was a greedy idiot at the same time. What was kind of interesting to me was the archetype of an outsider being able to come in and more effectively arbitrate disputes between these tribes because there was no baggage attached to him. They had guns too, but these two dudes could have been overwhelmed by the tribes for sure. I mean, they were at the end. The tribes just ended up trusting them because they were seemingly able to stop all of the conflicts by being these disruptive outsiders.

As soon as Dravot got too entangled with the native people by trying to take a wife, they lost faith in them and ran them out. If they had continued to be outsiders, they might have ironically been able to stay kings.

Dan played too much Victoria 2. Can't blob so much in shitty land like that and not expect massive problems from all sorts of native bullshit.

not to get into any pol tier bullshit but, when you google them, there are a lot of white looking nuristanis.