Chapter VI Science Fiction Tales 208

Chapter VI

Science Fiction Tales

I. Science Fiction Tales Poul Anderson, a leading American science fiction writer, said about his predecessor : "He is for everyone who responds to vividness, word magic, and sheer storytelling. Most readers go on to discover the subtleties and profundities." His colleague Gordon R. Dickson called him "a master of our art." Kipling also wrote of new inventions and future wars, and warned of the social consequences of technological change. He exerted an immense influence on modem science fiction.

Science fiction is a genre of fiction set in a society that differs from the present because of some irmovation in science or technology. It is distinct from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas". Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possibilities. The settings for science fiction are often contrary to known reality, but the majority of science fiction relies on a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief provided by potential scientific explanations to various fictional elements. These may include a setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in an historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archaeological record or a setting in outer space, on other worlds, or involving aliens. These stories generally involve technology or scientific principles that contradict known laws of nature.

They can involve discovery or application of new scientific principles, such as time travel or psionics, or new technology, such as nanotechnology, faster-than-light travel or robots, or of new and different political or social systems (e.g., a dystopia, or a situation where organized society has collapsed) 209

When we seek the roots of science fiction, the names of Jules Verne (1828-1905) or of H.G. Wells (1866-1946) come to our mind. When Hugo Gemsback founded the first real Science Fiction magazine in 1926, he filled out the early issues of Amazing Stories with reprints of their stories. The writers who shaped modem science fiction, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A.E. Van Vogt, L. Sprague de Camp, read Verne and Wells as boys. But today their works have achieved the status of classics: much honored but little read. It was their contemporary Kipling who has exerted the most lasting influence on modem science fiction. And it was Rudyard Kipling of whom Poul Anderson says, "His influence pervades modern science fiction and fantasy writing" (Kipling Journal).

Like Verne and Wells, Kipling wrote stories whose subject-matter is explicitly science-fictional. "With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D." portrays futuristic aviation in a journalistic present-tense that recalls Kipling's years as a teenaged subeditor on Anglo-Indian newspapers. "The Eye of Allah" deals with the introduction of advanced technology into a mediaeval society that may not be ready for it.

But it is not this explicit use of science and technology in some of his stories that makes Kipling so important to modem science fiction. Many of Kipling's contemporaries and predecessors wrote scientific fiction. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Conan Doyle are among them. Yet echoes of their work are seldom seen in today's science fiction. Kipling's appeal to modern readers lies instead in his approach and his technique.

The real subject-matter of Rudyard Kipling's writing is the world's work and the men and women and machines who do it. Whether that work be manual or intellectual, creative or administrative, the performance of his work is the most important thing in a person's life. As Disko Troop says in , "the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles" (Courageous67).

This is not a view shared by most of 20th-century literature; nor is Kipling's special sympathy with the work of Empire. This may explain why Rudyard Kipling has received less attention from the literary establishment than his writings deserve. But he 210 was an enormously popular writer, especially among working people. Even to this day he is widely quoted, often by people who would be shocked to learn the source of the colorftal expressions they so often use. Today's science fiction writers find their audience among the same strata of society that in Victoria's time read Kipling: adults engaged in the shaping of our world and young people exploring what life has to offer.

Kipling's writing embodies an attitude toward that work that places its satisfactory completion above convenience, desire, and comfort in the scheme of things. This attitude toward work and duty is also characteristic of modem science fiction. It places men and women in the role of creators and maintainers, rather than victims. It prefers exploring the intricacies of the craftsman's vision to indulging the subtleties of the narrative voice.

This exaltation of work and duty may be unfashionable in literary circles , but no technological society can flourish without it. Science fiction may not be essential to the survival of Western civilisation; but some literary tradition that embodies its essential attitudes will always accompany humankind on its road to the stars.

Kipling faced the same technical problem that the modem science fiction writer faces: the need to make an alien time and place understandable to his audience. Whether the scene be India under the British Raj or Mars under the Solar Federation, the reader needs to know the essential differences in biology, technology, and sociology that govern the characters and their actions. This information needs to be provided without interfering with the narrative. The reader wants a story, not a lesson.

John W Campbell, the magisterial editor who shaped the Golden Age of science fiction, considered Rudyard Kipling the first modem science fiction writer. Kipling, he explained, was the first to go beyond simply providing the reader with the essential background information needed to read his story. He was thinking here of "With the Night Mail". When this pseudo-journalistic account of transatlantic dirigible traffic first appeared in 1905, the text was accompanied by weather advisories, classifie advertisements, shipping notices, and a wide range of other snippets intended to suggest 211 that the tale was in fact appearing in a magazine pubUshed in 2000. All this stage business was extraneous to the story, strictly speaking; but it did help to establish the setting.

Kipling had learned this trick in India. His original Anglo-Indian readership knew the customs and institutions and landscapes of British India at first hand. But when he began writing for a wider British and American audience, he had to provide his new readers with enough information for them to understand what was going on. In his earliest stories and verse he made liberal use of footnotes, but he evolved more subtle methods as his talent matured. A combination of outright exposition, sparingly used, and contextual clues, generously sprinkled through the narrative, offered the needed background. In and other stories of India he uses King James English to indicate that characters are speaking in Hindustani; this is never explained, but it gets the message across subliminally.

Modern science fiction writers and their readers have become so accustomed to this sort of thing and so dependent on it that it has made much of the genre literally unreadable to many who have not learned its reading protocols. Samuel R Delany has observed that a statement that is meaningless in mimetic fiction (such as "The red sun is high, the blue low") can be a matter of simple description in science fiction, and a statement that could only be metaphorical ("Her world exploded") might be meant as literal fact in Science Fiction (Kipling Journal). It is this divergence in the way words are used, rather than any particular exoticism of subject-matter or the use of experimental narrative strategies (here SF is usually very conservative), that separates modem science fiction from the literary mainstream. And all this began with Kipling.

It is certainly that Kipling's works are immensely popular among science fiction writers. Allusions to Kipling in story titles and quotations from his verse may be found throughout the genre. Autobiographical essays and story introductions widely acknowledge Kipling as a favorite writer and a major inspiration. David Drake and Sandra Miesel have assembled two anthologies of stories written under the influence of Kipling, accompanied by introductions in which Poul Anderson, L Sprague de Camp, Joe Haldeman, and Gene Wolfe describe the impact that reading Kipling has had on their 212 own writing. But the best way to understand why Kipling has exerted so great an influence over modem science fiction is to read his own work.

We can look at Puck of Pook's Hill and , two collections of linked stories in which Kipling brings incidents of English history and prehistory to life, both for the children for whom the books were ostensibly written and for their elders. One could classify them as time-travel stories, thus bringing them into the taxonomy of science fiction. But their real relevance lies in the careful evocation of time and place, echoed in so many later stories by other writers who bring a modern observer into direct contact with earlier days. And by all means read Kipling's own science fiction stories. Most of these were collected in Kipling's Science Fiction, edited by the late John Brunner, a noted British Science-Fiction writer.

Let us consider Kipling's science fiction stories (in chronological order of initial publication) with particular attention to those aspects that place them in the science fiction category.

In 'A Matter of Fact'(1892)- The narrator ships from Capetown to England on a tramp steamer, with two other journalists for company-an American and a Dutchman. Out on the ocean, in a fog, they encounter a massive tidal wave, which almost swamps the ship, and overturns another big vessel. Then they have a strange encounter, across the very bulwarks of the ship, with a monster from the deep sea, cast up to the surface by an under-water earthquake. Soon after the fog clears and they see two such creatures, one mortally wounded and dying. The unwounded one swims to it, stays till it dies, and disappears over the gray sea.

Then comes the crux of the tale, how will the journalists cover what they have seen? The American, Keller, is highly excited, and plans to write up the story as a sensational scoop. The two Europeans, knowing that their readers are sceptical of over- hyped stories, scrap their copy. As they dock at Southampton and journey up to London, the orderly confident old-fashioned ordinariness of England starts to have its effect on Keller. He realises the sheer incongruity of his story in this setting, and drops it. The 213 narrator plans to tell it as fiction, "...for Truth is a naked lady, and if by accident she is drawn up from the bottom of the sea, it behooves a gentleman either to give her a print « petticoat or to turn his face to the wall and vow that he did not see" (Kipling, Inventions 34). A journalist himself, Kipling is. naturally sensitive to the way in which the public receives and understands the news.. As in the later "The Eye of Allah" he explores in this story the implications of bringing a scientific discovery to a public unprepared to deal with it.

'The Ship That Found Herself (r/ze Day's Work, 1898), one of several stories in which Kipling employs the pathetic fallacy, is the story of the ship Dimbula's maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York. The primary characters are personifications of the freighter's component elements or of the environmental forces that act upon her. The ship's officers appear at the beginning and end of the story, but only as commentators, not as actors. The essence of the story is the melting of all Dimbula's separate pieces "into one voice, which is the soul of the ship"-which happens when all realise that they have their part to play, and that playing that part is the most important thing that there is.

It is suggested that a generation more used to handling complex mechanical devices on a daily basis, namely, the family car, will understand that newly-built machinery has to be run-in before it achieves its full efficiency Kipling's anthropomorphizing the subject is nonetheless a reality.

'007' {The Day's Work, 1898) is another venture into the personification of inanimate objects. This time the characters are steam locomotives, entire great machines rather than mere components, and most of them are experienced veterans of Massachusetts railroading. The exception is '.007', whose "red paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar". He suffers the disdain of his roundhouse-mates, enjoys the sympathy of "a small, newish switching-engine" called Poney, and by rescuing one of his tormentors from derailment finally earns the respect of his seniors and the status of "full and accepted Brother of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotives". Though in outline it resembles a classic school story, the essence of ".007" is Kipling's fascination 214 for the work of the world, and his respect for the men and women (and machines) who perform it.

'The Army of a Dream' {Traffics and Discoveries) is less a story than a tract. It is an argument for universal military training, starting in childhood. The Narrator encounters his old comrade-in-arms Boy Bayley, now commanding "the Imperial Guard Battalion of the old regiment". Bayley and his mess-mates spend the afternoon explaining the structure of Britain's military system, in which "all boys begin physical drill to music in the Board Schools when they're six" and continue soldiering for decades. It is an all- volunteer army- "But as a little detail we never mention, if we don't volunteer in some corps or other- as combatants if we're fit, as non-combatants if we ain't - till we're thirty- five-we don't vote, and we don't get poor-relief, and the women don't love us." (TrafficsSl) This sounds familiar to:readers of Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers, set in a society which restricted citizenship to veterans of military service. The Narrator sees a competition for admission to the Guard Battalion, and at the end of the day is taken to a park "dotted with boys in and out of uniform, armed and unarmed" to watch their manoeuvres. At the end we learn that all this was indeed a dream.

This is Kipling's response to the worst features of the old army he observed in the South African war, the 'Old Guard', formal, set in its ways, ill-trained, unfit, often incompetent, beset by snobbery and caste, pre-occupied by rank and ritual, slow to adapt to new challenges, unloved and ill understood by the general population, the graveyard of too many promising young men. It is also a call to action against dangers to come. Like "With the Night Mail" {Actions and Reactions), or "As Easy as A.B.C." {A Diversity of Creatures), its narrative is based on an invented system of ideas, worked out in detail, with its own slang and 'in-talk'. Like "The Parable of Boy Jones" {Land and Sea Tales) it urges training for a future war. It is, perhaps, more pamphlet than story, and has been given a hard time by the critics.

In '' {Traffics and Discoveries, 1904) Kipling captures the excitement of the infant science of radio, and the single-mindedness of the young experimenter. The first-person narrator is visiting a chemist's shop where the proprietor's nephew is an avid 215 investigator of "this Marconi business", and plans to demonstrate this new form of communication. "There's nothing we shan't be able to do in ten years", he exclaims. "I want to live-my God, how 1 want to live, and see it develop!" {Traffics69) But the narrator spends most of the evening with the chemist's tubercular assistant Mr. Sheynor, who inexplicably begins to recite verses channelled from some source unknown to himself - but quite familiar to our narrator. In parallel with the transmission of Morse across the ether, we share the unconscious communication of a dying lover with the poet who a century before had shared both his emotion and his consumption. Like the wireless messages coming through space, it seems that inspiration is coming from the past by some mysterious unknown power. Meanwhile, the technical experimenters find that wireless messages are coming in, not from Poole as they had expected, but from two warships at sea off the English coast; but then Poole comes in 'clear as a bell'

'With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D' {Actions and Reactions, 1909) and its sequel "As Easy as A.B.C." {A Diversity of Creatures, 1917) explore the social as well as the technical side of a world economy based on air traffic. Technological change touches human lives, individually as well as collectively, and in these stories we see that ordinary people as well as heroes will be affected by aerial technology and the social structures set up to govern it. "With the Night Mail" is a journalist's account of a dirigible voyage aboard 'Postal Packet 162', carrying the mails from London to Quebec. The voyage itself is the story: no particular dramatic incident occurs, but that is precisely the point. Transatlantic aerial voyaging is a routine fact of life at the end of the 20th century. Kipling takes great pains to tell the tale as though he were reporting it in 2000 to readers familiar with the technology and sociology of travel: after the title appears in parentheses "Together with extracts from the contemporary magazine in which it appeared". In "As Easy as A.B.C", set sixty-five years later, Kipling investigates the nature of a society that might exist in a world of aerial traffic and the '' that exists to regulate it. But despite their remit to provide for "the planetary traffic...and all that that implies", the Board members' primary concern is the investigation of the cardinal sins of 21st-century civilisation: "crowd-making and invasion of privacy". Against these evils they deploy an armoury of high-technology weapons — and the ingenuity of a music-hall promoter with an eye for a profitable freak-show. (Poul Anderson described "As Easy As 216

A.B.C." as "a wonderful science fiction yarn, showing the same eye for detail that would later distinguish the work of Robert Heinlein".)

Reading it in an age in which intercontinental air travel is commonplace, one needs to bear in mind that the first successful powered flight had only taken place two years before, in 1903, and that the first flight across the English Channel was not accomplished until four years after the story was written.

'In the Same Boat' (A Diversity of Creatures, 1917) explores the frontiers of psychology. Two physicians discover that each has a patient suffering from paralyzing attacks of depression. Drugs are no use: they may "veil the horror" but cannot prevent its return. Being English physicians, neither even considers the talking cure. Instead the two patients — a young man and a young woman — are sent off together on a series of overnight railway journeys, during which they help one another to discover the prenatal traumas at the root of their afflictions and lend each other the strength to overcome them (Although Freudian ideas seem to underly this story — The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900 — neither his name nor the word "psychoanalysis" is mentioned.)

"The Eye of Allah" {Debits and Credits, 1926) deals with the introduction of advanced technology into a mediaeval society that may not be ready for it. In the dining- room of a 13th-century English monastery are gathered lay brother and miniature painter John of Burgos, Abbot Stephen de Sautre and his lady, the abbey's infirmarian, a visiting physician from Salerno, and a friar of Oxford with a taste for natural philosophy. John has brought back from Spain a small device of "art optic", with whose aid he has examined the minuscule creatures that inhabit a drop of ditch-water and found models for devils to illuminate the Gospel of Luke. This is science, not magic, and all present know it; but the Abbot, discerning a choice between two sins — "To deny the world a Light which is under our hand, or to enlighten the world before her time" (DebitsS9) chooses the lesser evil. Abbot, who has seen such things as a prisoner of war in Cairo, insists on destroying it, because otherwise they would all be burned for witchcraft. 217

"The Eye of Allah" is a specimen in miniature-of the "alternate history" story, the tale set in a world estranged from our own by some significant historical event that unfolded differently from our consensus reality. Though in this case the alteration is only hinted at, Kipling manages to recreate convincingly and empathetically the mediaeval attitude toward science and faith.

"Unprofessional" {, 1932) tells of four scientifically inclined friends whose leisure time and financial resources enable them to undertake research. These men are old comrades from the Great War. Three are doctors, Vaughan, a surgeon, Loftie, a pathologist, and Ackerman, a dilettante physician. The fourth is an astronomer. Harries, who has 'notions' about the possible infiuence of stars and planets on human life: 'We can't tell on what system this dam' dynamo of our universe is wound, but we know we're in the middle of every sort of wave, as we call 'em.' (LimitslS)

Harries inherits £1 million and a big income, and funds a nursing-home for Vaughan and a laboratory for Loftie. At Harries's behest, and despite the 'professional' scepticism of the doctors, they study specimens of tissue taken from cancer patients. They observe curious ripples, 'tides' as it were, that seem to vary with the time of day, and are different from patient to patient. They experiment with mice, and find a tidal flow in their tissues also, and that when they are treated for dangerous conditions, this is more likely to be successful if they are operated on at the 'flood'. Mrs. Bemers, one of the cancer patients, needs another operation, and they apply the same principle, operating at midnight, when her 'tides' are at the flood, near the date and time of her birthday, and with her lying on a particular compass bearing. The operation is much more successful than they had expected.

They also see, though, a mouse, saved by a similar operation, developing a death wish, and killing itself by thrusting its head through the bars of its cage. This seems to have happened on the 'ebb' when two 'tides' have clashed, and they see, with concern, that Mrs. Berners is exhibiting the same gestures. She too tries to kill herself, but is narrowly prevented from doing so, and survives. C. A. Bodelsen suggests that she knew she was 218 doomed to die, even though she was, like the mouse, cured of cancer by an operation carried out at the right time of her 'tides'. (97)

In the eyes of Harries, the astronomer, what has been proved is ' not a dam' thing, except that it may give us some data and inference which may serve as some sort of basis for some detail of someone else's work in the future'. We are left with the thought that there are indeed mysterious processes at work in human tissues, which might be related to 'waves' from the universe, and that in order to understand them, imagination and intuition may be as important as scientific investigation.

Science fiction writers know Rudyard Kipling as a tremendously versatile writer, a superb literary craftsman, and an inspiration to those who have chosen to write of people and the work that they do. Any substantial collection of science fiction and fantasy should inevitably include many stories written under his influence.

II. Narrative Techniques in Kipling's Tales In his time, Kipling was generally despised by writers such as Henry James, Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford as a young, audacious writer without art or craft. It is only in recent years that Kipling has become the subject of serious study as an artist whose methods merit careful analysis. But still the attention is centred mainly on Kipling's later rather than earlier works which remain relatively neglected. A careful examination of Kipling's early short stories reveal that even in his early phase, Kipling had already reached a considerable degree of technical sophistication in his best tales.

In his autobiographical writing, Something of Myself, Kipling has confessed his desire to arrive at compression and economy of meaning in his writing, to express his ideas "not directly but by implication," and to bestow multiple layers of meaning on his tales: "Since the tales had to be read by children, before people realized that they were meant for grown-ups ... I worked the material in three or four overlaid tints and textures, which might or might not reveal themselves according to the shifting light of sex, youth and experience"(Mv5e//l 90). 219

It may be claimed that Kipling's interest in these directions is largely at the root of his use of such methods as the frame-story, the "limited" narrator and the suppressed narrative, methods which have contributed no small part towards the success of some of Kipling's early short stories.

It must not be supposed that Kipling is an innovator in the use of these narrative methods. The frame-story is an age-old narrative device with commonly-accepted functions like the creation of atmosphere and mood, the portrayal of the dramatised narrator and the establishment of major themes. Kipling, in cultivating this narrative technique, did not go far beyond these traditional usages. What he did was to rely more heavily on the frame than most of his predecessors had done and, what is more important, to weld the frame and the main narrative closer together to form an integral whole. In his best tales, the two are so intrinsically related that the central story could not exist alone without suffering much loss in effect.

"The Courting of Dinah Shadd" (1890) is a good example of Kipling's achievement in the use of the frame-story in his early phase. The frame here presents us with the scene in which the central story is told, and this opening narrative situation is at once most rich in meaning and evocative of atmosphere. The scene is of a soldiers' mess after a day's military manoeuvres. The soldiers are making merry, but behind their apparent joviality one feels a pervading sense of tragedy:"Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which . . . draw the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of heaven itself (Life 's Handicaps?).

The bright Indian stars, like occasional human rejoicings, are shrouded in a dark void and overarched by the barred heavenly gates. Of all the boys who are singing and laughing so gaily, not one is to live for long: They went to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. Burmah, the Sudan, and the frontiers — fever and fight — took them hi their time (Life 'sHandicap3S). 220

These suggestions of the general sadness of the human condition are further tinged with a hint that this eternal unhappiness is brought about in part by man's own follies, a point which only deepens the melancholy mood. This implication is made clear in Mulvaneys' talk during the soldiers' mess. With infinite regret he confesses how, owing to personal weaknesses, he is forever denied promotion. He describes how his heart is eaten with remorse and pain every time he is passed over at parade and no amount of liquor can ease the pain. And every tune he is let off lightly after some folly, it is not delight that he feels but burning shame: "Is ut smilin' I feel whin I fall away an' go back to Dinah Shadd, thryin to carry ut all off as a joke? Not I! Tis hell to me, dumb hell through ut all." {Life's Handicap42).

The sadness of the human condition is thus rendered doubly painfiil in that man is at least in part the cause of his own troubles. But whatever weaknesses a man may possess, he is yet strong in his ability to carry the human burden: we have seen how Mulvaney carries his misfortune with a smiling face even though he is writhing with torment within. The frame also successfully evokes the mood of longing and nostalgia, the nostalgia of lonely soldiers in a foreign land far away from home. Mulvaney recalls with yearning the by-gone Dublin days and his misgivings are echoed by the soldiers who sing a song.

Amidst this atmosphere, we listen to Mulvaney's tale of the sweeten s of love and the sorrow of failure in life. As Mulvaney tells his story of the courting of Dinah Shadd, there is no need to expatiate on the feeling of emptiness and loneliness endured by the bachelor soldier in an alien land: all that is made tangibly real to us through the vivid building up of emotion and atmosphere in the frame.

And when Mulvaney recalls old Mother Sheehy's curse on him and assures us of the reality of its effect, his profound regret and sense of failure are brought home vividly and concretely to us as a result of the expert preparation in the frame. Yet, in spite of Mother Sheehy's curse and its ill effects, Mulvaney still lives on in silent dignity, and thus the theme of human strength evoked in the frame is given concrete illustration. When Mulvaney comes to the end of his tale, he catches sight of Ortheris carousing among the other soldiers and, remembering how Ortheris once "waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved abominably,"significantly remarks: "Ay, listen to our little man now, singin' an' shoutin' as tho' trouble had niver touched him. D'you remember when he went mad with the homesickness?" {Life's Handicap6\).

Ortheris here serves as a parallel to Mulvaney. Like Mulvaney, Ortheris too has his sorrows and regrets and, like Mulvaney, Ortheris'has survived 'his disappointments, having taken them all in his stride, and is now again presenting a brave front to the world. Yet who knows what is gnawing in his heart beneath his jolly surface? This parallel in Ortheris raises Mulvaney's story from the particular to the general and gives it a form of universal significance, a significance reinforced by the last glimpse we have of Mulvaney with "the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not what vultures tearing his liver" (X(/e'^ Handicap6\.) Mulvaney is raised to become a symbol of man, carrying within him his weaknesses as well as his stoical strength. Without the frame-story with its thematic suggestions and human parallels, the whole tale would have lost much of its effect and symbolic value. The central story of the courting of .Dinah Shadd is told by Mulvaney himself As with Mulvaney's other stories, it has linguistic peculiarities reflecting the geographical, social, educational and occupational background of the speaker. The tone and the manner too are individual to Mulvaney. This is how he describes hisfirst meeting with Dinah:"Bein' but a shlip av a girl she wart pink at seein' me, an' I twisted me moustache an' looked at a picture fominst the wall. Niver show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an' begad she'l come bleatin' to your boot-heels!"(Z,//e'5 Handicap45)

Not only the language with its Irish accent, its unconventional grammatical structure, its turns of phrase and choice of images, but even the very pose of knowingness, the mixture of tenderness and robustness, and the feeling of self- satisfaction, are all characteristic of Mulvaney. These personal touches are responsible for the forcefulness, liveliness and verisimilitude of the tale. 222

"The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) further illustrates Kipling's skilful use of the frame for various purposes. One function of the frame here is to establish the appropriate setting and atmosphere so as to render the fantastic occurrence in the central narrative easily acceptable. It opens with the author-narrator, an English journalist, travelling from Ajmir to Mhow in the Intermediate compartment of a train. Conditions in the compartment are so bad, we are told, that in the hot weather, passengers are often taken out of the carriages dead. The world presented here is a clearly recognisable world, the Indian world of poverty and squalor. In the train, the author-narrator meets another Intermediate class passenger, a vagabond who earns his bread by all sorts of crooked means. Right now he is on his way to blackmail the Degumber Rajah. The Rajah is said to have filled his father's widow with red pepper and "slippered her to death as she hung from a beam." The loafer tells the author that he is the only one who would dare to go into the State to blackmail the Rajah. "They'll try to poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there.""(Kipling Wee Willie Winkie204).

In this manner, we are informed of the chaos existing in central India where murder and blackmail are all within the day's work. The author-narrator assures us too of the "peculiar methods of government" in the Native States of India and points out that "nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other."(ffee Willie Winkie204-5).

The rumours of chaos and fantastic happenings in the central Indian states are verified by the journalist narrator's own experience there where he sometimes consorts with kings, drinking from crystal and eating from silver, and sometimes merely sleeps by the road-side,eating whatever he can get off a plate of leaves. In this context, the central narrative describing how two vagabonds attain to the heights of kingship in those native states becomes conceivable.

Some of the actions in the frame are also directly related to the central incident: they form the prelude as well as the sequel to the central episode. It is in the frame that we learn of the journalist-narrator's first meetings with the two vagabonds, Peachey Camehan 223 and Daniel Dravot; it is in the frame that we learn of Carnehan's and Dravot's aspiration to kingship and witness their preparations for this elevation. It is also in the frame that we are informed of the outcome of their mission: Carnehan returns alone, a mental and physical wreck, carrying with him the dried and shrivelled head of Dravot. What happened to Dravot and Carnehan in the interval between their departure to Kafiristan and Carnehan's reappearance in his miserable state is related by Carnehan to the journalist on his return. The central narrative, thus embedded in the frame, would not have been complete by itself. The frame and the story it encloses are thus welded together as one continuous action.

But the most significant contribution of the frame is that it helps to bring out the wider application of the central story. Fantastic as Carnehan's story may appear, studied in its context, it takes on an almost symbolic value. It becomes a farce of world politics. The frame contains enough hints to suggest parallels between the apparently fantastic world of Kafiristan and the "civilized" western world. If kings are murdered in Kafiristan and tribes break out in petty rivalry, these also happen in the western world, though they may be disguised in a more becoming form. News of such occurrences in the other side of the world is always reaching the newspaper office: "the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires are saying, 'You're another,' and Mister Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the British Dominions"(f^ee Willie WinkielQl).

The strategy for conquest worked out by Dravot and Carnehan in the newspaper office is a mimic of Western political strategies to get control of less developed countries: "We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find — 'D'you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his throne and establish a Dy-nasty" {Wee Willie WinkielU).

The Contract drawn up by Carnehan and Dravot, too, is a burlesque of the treaties signed by the conquering Western powers in their joint effort to seduce "backward" countries. On the day Dravot and Carnehan set out on their conquest, Dravot is disguised 224 as a priest and Carnehan his servant, and they carry with them in bags what they openly claim to be mud-toys, charms to sell to the people in the North. These charms, as expected, are in fact guns and ammunition. Is this perhaps a hint of how the Western powers embark on their conquest of less developed countries under the guise of spreading the word of God? Embedded in its frame which is full of veiled innuendos and revealing details, the central narrative becomes an ironical, a farcical story of Western exploitation of "backward" countries.

Carnehan is an interesting "limited" narrator. His lowly birth, his want of education and his undeveloped intelligence give him his special accent, unconventional style and air of naivety. His simplicity is reflected in his manner of speech as well as in his entire attitude. He relates silly little tricks done with childish delight and recounts Dravot's every act with genuine humility and naive admiration. These touches not only enrich his tale with a distinctive personal flavour but also bestow on it a pleasing quality of simplicity.

Carnehan's total mental collapse on his return from Kafiristan leaves its mark on the way he tells his story. His mind is in such a confused state that sometimes he forgets his own identity and mistakes Dravot for himself: he says that it was Peachey Carnehan who fell from the bridge. And he is so obsessed with the scene of Dravot's death that, at the slightest hint, his mind flies back to it. Nor can he tell his story logically: his listener, the author-narrator, has to keep him on the narrative line or else he will fly off at a tangent. By making Carnehan tell his story in this confused manner, Kipling successfully dramatizes Carnehan's state of mind as well as gives the central narrative the illusion of a tale taken straight from life, from the mouth of a deranged adventurer, without any interference from the author and without any intellectual reconstitution. Compared to Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier which came more than a quarter of a century later, this is a very elementary attempt to dramatize a narrator's mental confusion and works at a much less sophisticated level. Yet it nevertheless represents a step away from conventional ordered narration towards capturing the 'association and wayward workings of the mind. 225

"Mrs. Bathurst" (1904) presents yet another way of telling a story not in the manner of conventional ordered narration. The central story concerning Vickery and Mrs. Bathurst, instead of being told in its entirety in a straight-forward fashion by one of the characters in the frame, as many of Kipling's stories are told, gradually takes shape in the course of a chance conversation involving the author narrator,Pritchard, Pyecroft, and Hooper who has just returned from "up-country."

At first, the conversation does not seem to take any obvious direction, but runs on leisurely in a reminiscent mood. The conversationalists reflect, apparently inconsequentially, on the amorous affairs between sailors and maids working at the seaside,pointing out that sailors in their smart uniforms do have an immense attraction for these bar-maids and that they are often led to desert as a result of love-affairs with them. Speaking of desertion, the conversationalists recall the affair connected with Boy Niven. Boy Niven is said to have "lured" seven or eight seamen to leave their ship and follow him into the woods of British Columbia. The seamen, being young and curious, "lovin" an 'trustful,"(7>a^c5343) were easily taken in and did not discover their mistake till it was too late. For their desertion of the ship, the poor sailor boys were duly punished with "heavy thunder with continuous lightning for two hours." {Traffics344) Boy Niven too was not spared by his victims who "gave him enough to suffer" when they came out of their confinement. The conversation then drifts from Boy Niven to Moon, a sailor who deserted for the sake of a woman after sixteen years in the service. These conversationalists, rude of speech and coarse in their attitude towards things, come to reflect on the extraordinary hold love for women has over a man and it is on this thought that the story of Vickery is brought to their mindr

According to Pritchard and Pyecroft, Vickery had deserted upcountry (at this point the railway inspector. Hooper, who has just returned from upcountry, becomes extraordinarily interested). The conversation turns on the cause of Vickery's desertion. None of the speakers knows all the details about Vickery. Pritchard and Pyecroft each produces an incomplete piece of information and it is from such broken fragments of information that the story of Vickery is built up. Pyecroft suggests that Vickery's desertion was connected with a woman from Hauraki, called Mrs. Bathurst, a maid in one 226 of the local bars. Pritchard next takes up the narrative and reveals all he knows of this woman. From Pritchard's account of her, it seems that she is distinguished by her "lovin' and trustful" nature. She is also seen as the sort of woman who has a magnetic hold over the man "she is struck with" so that the man either "goes crazy—or just saves himself." '\Traffics352) Already some of the apparently irrelevant details given in the frame — about the maids working at the seaside, about the "lovin' an' trustful" sailors who were misled by Boy Niven, about the desertion of Moon and its cormection with a certain woman— begin to be seen as in some way connected with Vickery's case.

When Pritchard met Mrs. Bathurst in Hauraki some years back, it was not known that Mrs. Bathurst was acquainted with Vickery, nor do the conversationalists know now how the relationship was struck up or developed. The next thing they know of Vickery and Mrs. Bathurst is supplied by Pyecroft who happened to sad in the same boat with Vickery. During that voyage, Pyecroft had heard Vickery mention Mrs. Bathurst once or twice, but the most perplexing thing took place when they were anchored in Cape Town. Phyllis's Circus was stationed in Cape Town then and among the entertainments there was a film called "Home and Friends for a Tickey." The film was taken from real life and there was in it a short glimpse of Mrs. Bathurst alighting from a train just arrived at Paddington from Plymouth. It is to be supposed that Mrs. Bathurst had left Hauraki to go to London and Vickery assured Pyecroft that she was in London to look for him. This short glimpse of Mrs. Bathurst seemed to have an irresistible influence over Vickery so that he went every night by some mysterious compulsion to see her on the screen. Vickery agreed with Pyecroft that seeing that picture was like meeting old friends and he pointed out how he would count the minutes before he could see Mrs. Bathurst appearing on the screen again. He referred to her "very softly an' as you might say affectionately" {Traffics359) and exhibited great mental torture when he could not see her. Seeing Vickery's condition, Pyecroft concluded that he was "a dumb lunatic"(rrq//7c5'358). When the Circus left Cape Town to perform up-country, Vickery managed somehow to get a mission to go up-country and was pleased at the prospect of seeing Mrs. Bathurst there. But from this mission Vickery never returned. Pyecroft's account certainly points to a love affair between Vickery and Mrs. Bathurst but the details of this relationship are not known. It is not known, for example, what really occurred between Vickery and Mrs. 227

Bathurst apart from their love-relationship. Did Mrs. Bathurst know that Vickery was married? What happened to her after her arrival in London? Was there anything else in Vickery's hellish mental torment apart from unquenchable longing to see Mrs. Bathurst? A number of questions remain unanswered.

It is Hooper who has just returned from up-country and who has all along exhibited great interest in the personal aspect of Vickery that supplies the rest of the information. It appears that Vickery was struck by lightning while traveling up-country: Hooper found his charred corpse in a standing position and it was identified by the false teeth and tattoo marks. Squatting beside him and looking up at him was another unidentifiable charred body. At hearing this piece of news about the second body, Pritchard covers his face with his hands, "like a child shutting out an ugliness," murmuring:"And to think of her at Hauraki!' "With 'er 'air-ribbon on my beer.Oh, my Gawd! (Traffics359).

It seems that in Pritchard's mind, there is no doubt that the squatting figure was Mrs. Bathurst though no confirmation is available. The conversation ends while a picnic party is singing 'On a summer afternoon, when the honeysuckle blooms. And all Nature seems at rest. Underneath the bower, 'mid the perfume of the flower, Sat a maiden with the one she loves the best'(7>q//7c5'359).

It is this fragmented and incomplete manner that the story of Vickery is revealed. The narration does not follow a strictly chronological order: Vickery's desertion is referred to first and it is through the speculation of others that the rest of the picture is put in. Pritchard, Pyecroft and Hooper each supplies a portion of the information and from these fragments of material some story is revealed, though in an incomplete fashion. No connectives between these fragments are available and no inside version is at hand: much is left to the imagination of the reader. This fragmented and incomplete manner of telling Vickery's story dramatizes one of the ways by which a story may be told in real life. Then too, to reveal this tragic story fragmentarily through the mouths of several stolid and callous characters, much wanting in finer perceptions, is extremely powerful in suggestion: one gets an impression of a tragedy which no finer methods could have 228 evoked with equal power. Though many essential details and links are left out in the central narrative, which leaves us in doubt as to what really took place between the hero and the heroine, the fi-ame — the apparent digressions both preceding and following the speculations concerning Vickery — does offer many illuminating hints. The conversationalists' random remarks on how maids working at the seaside are often attracted by sailors in their smart uniforms could suggest that Mrs. Bathurst too was attracted to Vickery in this manner. And like the "lovin" an' trustful" seamen who were "lured" by Boy Niven, Mrs. Bathurst might have been similarly lured by Vickery to leave Hauraki to go all the way to England, only to discover that Vickery was already married. Just as Boy Niven's victims had given Boy Niven "enough to suffer" for his misdeed, so too Mrs. Bathurst had caused Vickery much suffering. The picnic-party's song has effect of suggesting that the squatting figure looking up at Vickery was no other than his love, Mrs. Bathurst. It seems that, ilke Boy Niven and his victims, Vickery and his victim, Mrs. Bathurst, were punished with lightning for their actions. Thus the apparent irrelevancies in the frame are really carefully calculated to throw a parallel light on Vickery's case. The frame serves as a complement to the central story to make up for the missing links. While these apparent digressions give to the conversation a touch of the directionlessness of a piece of casual conversation in real life, they are on a deeper level subtly related to the central story and so a combination of fidelity to life's formlessness with inherent artistic unity is achieved.

Another narrative device exploited by Kipling in his early period is that of the "limited" narrator, a term which calls for some explanation. All narrative points of view apart from the omniscient, it must be pointed out, are to some extent limited, limited by the chosen angle of vision, limited by the individual mode of sensibility or outlook of the reflector. By the term "limited" narrator is meant not this limitation to which all narrators, as human individuals, are subject, but a special kind of limitation amounting to a defect of equipment which significantly modifies the narrative outlook or marmer or both. It is possible that, owing to insufficient intelligence, a narrator fails to comprehend fully what he sees and consequently misinterprets a situation, although sometimes this "limited" narrator may have the positive fiinction of causing details to be seen afresh or felt in a special, new way. A story told through such a narrator is often an oblique narrative 229 calling for the reader's active and attentive participation. It is also possible that a narrator's manner of speech is affected by his want of education or power of self-expression so that his narrative takes a fragmented and incoherent form. It is in these two more specific senses that the term "limited" narrator is used by the researcher. This technique of the "limited" narrator is not Kipling's invention. As early as 1801, Maria Edgeworth used, in Castle Rackrent, an uneducated family retainer to tell the family story the significance of which eludes his simple mind. He records his master's actions faithfully and accepts every-thing about them unquestioningly without perceiving the essential imbecility of it all. Through this oblique and incomplete narrative the truth is nevertheless communicated to the reader. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1884) too is told by a "limited" narrator. Huck tells his own story in a style limited by deficiencies in grammar and vocabulary. The sentence structures are simple and re fleet not only Huck's limited command of language but also the simple workings of his mind. The narrative manner is a dramatization in language of Huck's individual and immature sensibility.

Mulvaney and Carnehan with whom we made our acquaintance earlier on, are marked by their lowly origin and want of education which directly affect their narrative style and manner and set them quite apart from conventional literary narrators. They could be classified as "limited" narrators in the sense described. However, Mulvaney in "The Courting of Dinah Shadd" and Carnehan in "The Man Who Would Be King" are limited mainly on account of their non-literary manner of narration; as far as their grasp of their subjects is concerned, they are riot particularly deficient. In "Love-O'-Women" (1893), on the other hand, the narrator is limited on two scores: his inadequate understanding of the affair he takes upon himself to narrate, as well as his inability to express himself clearly and coherently. The tale told through him in its rough and rugged fashion not only partakes of a strong personal flavour conducive to verisimilitude, but, more important, is extraordinarily powerful, owing to the clever exploitation of the defects of the narrator to give the central narrative its special shape and effect. "Love-0'- Women" is a good example of how the limitations of a narrator may be turned to positive use.Mulvaney, through whom Larry's tragedy is told,, gathers his material from personal observations as well as from Larry's feverish and incoherent confessions.Mulvaney's personal observations give us the external facts but, owing to his limited intelligence and 230 lack of education, he tends to draw the wrong conclusions from the available evidence and therefore misses the significance behind these observable facts. For instance, he records factually Larry's reckless behaviour during military confrontations, observing how Larry "wud stay pottin' an' pottin" from behind a rock, and wait till the fire was heaviest, an' then stand up an' fire man-height clear," and notes how Larry "wud lie out in camp too at night, snipin' at the shadows, for he never tuk a mouthful av slape" (Kipling, Inventionsll A-15)

But completely fails to realize the reason behind such odd behaviour. His simple soldier's mind sees Larry's recklessness and restlessness as the product of youthful audacity and does not suspect for a minute that this restlessness is the result of mental unrest, or that by his reckless behaviour Larry is trying to end his tortured existence. So too Mulvaney notes with puzzlement (which, by the way, is a source of comic relief) Larry's uneven gait, but not being well-informed, fails .to perceive that this is the symptom of a severe case of locomotor ataxy. From these fragmentary glimpses and misinterpreted accounts, however, the reader is able to catch the merest tail of the truth without quite understanding the entire situation. We see here that the narrator's defective perception is exploited as a means to control the flow of information as well as to heighten the pathetic appeal of the subject through understatement and miscomprehension. Slowly, from Larry's feverish and incoherent talk, Mulvaney comes to realize the tortured state of Larry's soul, and grasps faintly part of the reason behind it. The real state of affairs is by no means clear to Mulvaney: he can only reproduce the broken words that fell from Larry's lips in his illness and let the reader draw his own conclusions:"Fwhat the right an' the wrong av Love-o'-Women an' Di'monds-an~Pearls was I niver knew, an' I will niver know; but I've tould ut as I came acrosl ut — here an' there in little pieces" {lnventions291)).

Larry's broken confessions are suggestive but by no means clear. All that transpires is that Larry was eaten with remorse and regret for his past sins for which there was no remedy and that his mental suffering was in some way connected with a woman whom he called "Di'monds-an'-Pearls": 231

So long as I did not think," sez Love-0'-Women, "so long I did not see — I wud not see, but I can now, what I've lost. The time an' the place," he sez, "anl the very words I said whin ut pleased me to go off alone to hell. But thin, even thin," he sez, wrigglin' tremenjous, "I wud not ha' been happy. There was too much behind av me. How cud I ha' believed her sworn oath — me that have bruk mine again an' again for the sport av seein' thim cry? An' there are the others," he sez. "Oh, what will I do — what will I do?" He rocked back an' forward again, an' I think he was cryin' like wan av the women he talked av (InventionsllS).

Though Mulvaney is lacking in perceptive power, he is far from callous or unfeeling. On the contrary, Larry's suffering seems to have affected him deeply and, in his humble way, he is able to bring home to the reader the intensity of Larry's hellish torments. From Larry's incoherent confessions as well as from Mulvaney's inadequate observations and sympathetic emotional response, the reader is informed of some tragic drama without quite grasping the whole truth, which is being carefully withheld for dramatic revelation later. It can be seen, therefore, that Mulvaney's limitations as a narrator are here part of a deliberate narrative strategy: it is through his defective perception that the subject is made to emerge in its hazy but suggestive manner. When the final revelation does come, it comes with shattering power as a result of this clever manipulation of the narrative material. This final revelation comes in Mulvaney's description of the last meeting between Larry and "Di'monds-an'-Pearls," which he personally witnessed, and which he is therefore able to render in full, though still not quite understanding the meaning behind it all. From the passion-ridden exchanges of looks and words between Larry and "Di'monds-an'-Pearls" during this meeting, the entire picture at last dawns on the reader. At this climactic moment, all the dislodged bits of information about Larry's licentiousness given before, all the fragmentary references to "Di'monds-an'-Pearls," the descriptions of Larry's intense remorse and the hints on his syphilis, fall into place to give a vivid picture of Larry's tragedy. It then emerges with shattering effect that, because Larry had so often in his past broken his promises to women, now that he had finally encountered the passion of his life, he could no longer believe in his girl's avowals of love and fidelity, and his inability to believe became a 232 source of intense suffering for him. The girl, on her part, was much put off by Larry's want of trust in her and, in her bitterness, gave herself to prostitution as a gesture of protest, which, naturally, added an immense weight to Larry's mental burden. Then too, Larry's severe case of locomotor ataxy destroyed all hopes of finding ultimate peace and happiness with "Di'monds-an'-Pearls." It was in this unbearable state of mind that Larry finally met his end in the girl's presence. The girl, in turn, committed suicide. The fragmentary and oblique manner of narration which marks the first portion of Mulvaney's tale, instead of being an obstacle to clarity and vividness, is in fact part of Kipling's art to prepare for, and make posible, the dramatic revelation at the end. The "limited" narrator in this instance supplies the rationale for Kipling's manipulation of his material: the "limited' narrator is a device for governing the flow of information so as to achieve accumulative and crescendo effect at the climax.

Mulvaney's uncertain grasp of his subject and his incompetence as a narrator are also dramatized in the many apparently irrelevant details in the narrative. As he has no clear conception of the story he is telling, he follows no definite narrative line and often runs off into irrelevances, omitting to emphasize significant factors and putting stress on the wrong places. Consequently his tale is suffused with a profusion of apparent digressions, which give to the narrative the appearance of an impromptu oral account proceeding from a common soldier, and help to heighten the illusion of a tale told in real life. More important still, these digressions are, on a deeper level, an intrinsic part of the entire narrative; without them the tale's effect would be much diminished. The various anecdotes about the regiments Mulvaney and Larry met on their way to Peshawur may appear superficially unrelated to the subject of Larry's unhappy love, but actually they are indispensable hi setting the mood for the final meeting of Larry and the girl. The digression about the people along the road to Peshawur anxiously awaiting the return of their folks and friends from battle, brings out the passionate yearning that must be burning in "Di'monds-an'-Pearls's" heart as she came out to meet her prodigal lover. The digression on the Jock Elliotts who returned from the front in such a broken state — "with four pipers an' not half a kilt among them"(Inventions23)— and who presented such a pathetic contrast to their comrades, the Lancers' Band, who had remained behind and were now waiting for them in perfect trim, serves as a herald to the tragic last meeting of 233

Larry and his unhappy mate. Like the Jock Elliots, Larry also returned in a broken shape, and the bitter cynicism veiling intense passion with which "Di'monds-an'-Pearls" greeted him had the same heroic and tragic note as the heart-rending music struck up by the Lancers' Band to welcome the miserable return of their friends. The tragic mood is perhaps most vividly evoked in the digression about the Flyby-Nights. They were waiting for the return of their second battalion from battle,, but when their chums turned up, broken and depleted, the Colonel's horse appeared without the Colonel. And it was amid the doleful tune of "The Dead March" that the soldiers returned to their camp, in uniforms "as black as the Sweeps, crawlin' past like the dead." With these digressions, the stage is set for the enactment of the final meeting.

But before the climax of the meeting is reached, there is yet another digression on Mulvaney's happy reunion with Dinah Shadd. This is at once a parallel and a contrast to Larry's case. Mulvaney's and Dinah's joy at reunion brings out, in relief, the pathos of Larry's last meeting with "Di'monds-an'-Pearls." In addition, Dinah's anxious concern and zealous love for Mulvaney reflects "Di'monds-an'-Pearls" repressed but equally passionate love for her prodigal lover. Mulvaney's factual record of the final meeting between Larry and his girl, arriving after this subtle preparation of mood and theme, is able to take on a strong emotional appeal that could not have been achieved otherwise. Thus again we see how cleverly Kipling makes use of Mulvaney's positive lack of equipment ,his incoherent manner of narration, to arrive at desired effects.

The tales examined in the above are representative examples of Kipling's concern with narrative technique in his early phase. His interest in this direction was to grow with the years and became more manifest in the later period of his writing career. Though one would indeed hesitate to say that Kipling had any direct influence on the three masters of narrative technique contemporary with him—James, Conrad and Ford—or vice versa, one must admit that he did contribute towards the boom in technical experimentation of his time. 234

Works Sited

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3. Kipling, Rudyard. Life's Handicap. London:Macmillan.l964. Print.

4. Kipling, Rudyard. . New York: D.Appleton & Co. 1899. Print.

5. Kipling, Rudyard. Something of Myself Great Britain: Macmillan and co.l937. Print.

6. Kipling, Rudyard. Traffics and Discoveries. New York: Charles Scribner's sons, 1913. Print.

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