The True Beast: An Exploration of Colonial Attitudes in “The Mark of a Beast”

The famed author of “The White Man’s Burden,” Rudyard Kipling, is commonly considered to be a supporter of the British Empire who defends British imperialism through an attitude of ethno-nationalist pride and holier-than-thou condescension towards non-Anglo cultures. However, a more critical survey of his several works indicates Kipling’s wide spectrum of perspectives on the morality of the British colonizer, from the blatantly jingoistic to the immensely critical: the short story “The Mark of the Beast” ranks among the latter. I contend that Rudyard Kipling’s “The Mark of the Beast” utilizes characterization and irony in order to critique the British Empire and suggest that the attempt to defeat the power of Indian natives and their culture will ultimately drive the moral ruin of British colonizers.

The most obvious instance of characterization being used to convey the power of native traditions over colonial interference lies in the horrific transformation of the work’s most offensive British character: Fleete. Kipling immediately sets up Fleete’s character as brutish and dishonorable, and very clearly intends him to be disliked by the reader. His very frame is “big [and] heavy,” his background is that of an unrefined pariah who “[lived] alone in the hills out of the reach of society,” and his complaints “of the difficulties of the language” suggest both condescending ignorance and genuine stupidity. He is also consumed by what we commonly consider to be ill behaviors: excessive drinking and smoking. Thus, through this preliminary exposition, the story very clearly guides the reader into wishing for the fall of Fleete’s hubris and intends that we see his future actions as immoral. Fleete's drunken offenses of grinding his cigar ash into the “red stone image of Hanuman and “[patting] the priests on the back” convey a sense of ownership over the natives. Fleete acts with a sense of entitlement rather than guilt: as if he is entering his own home rather than intruding into another’s. His entitlement to the native land is apparent when he claims “that the smells of the bazaar were overpowering and he wondered why slaughter-houses were permitted so near English residences.” There is an element of situational irony in his discontent with his surroundings because Fleete, with his crassness, cultural insensitivity, and distant home in the hills, is the most foreign, out-of-place character in the story and still finds complaint with a land that was never meant for him. Fleete’s later beastly incarnation is less a transformation and more a stereotypical literalization of this blunt and unrefined personality. The beast was ravenous for food in the manner that the British were hungry for power and its non-human behavior suggests that the British colonists have disconnected themselves from humanity by “othering” almost every society on the planet. Fleete’s primary purpose in “The Mark of The Beast” lies in his symbolic bestiality that allows Kipling to correlate the arrogant entitlement of British colonists to the carnal, bloodthirsty immorality of a beast. 

The powerful but silent omnipresence of Hanuman throughout the work allows the deity to symbolize the larger spiritual power of Indian society that is neither understood nor perceived by the ever-conquering and spiritually rootless British colonials.  In retaliation to the unwarranted entitlement of Fleete, the omnipresent spirit of Hanuman seems to orchestrate the mysterious series of events as a lesson to the three British characters in the story. The disappearance of the entire incident from the memory of the priests, Strickland wondering whether this is all a dream, and the narrator describing this incident as “beyond any human and rational experience,” further implies that this occurrence was a matter of divine cosmic justice. Hanuman seems to embody the powerful but irrational cultural strength that many colonized societies carry - irrespective of British dismissiveness. This silent power that the divine Hanuman holds in the narrative is completely disregarded by the narrator who still considers him a mere statue of “stone and brass”. This statement uses irony to suggest the spiritual hollowness of the British colonists: the divine in a non-Christian form may come into their lives, orchestrate the most other-worldly havoc possible, and the British will still deny the validity of the natives’ belief in an effort to assume religious superiority.

The characterization with which Kipling makes a far more severe argument against all forms of British imperialism lies in the creation of a hypocritical and vile man out of a supposedly honorable and righteous member of the British colonial establishment: Strickland. “Strickland of the Police ... knows as much of natives of India as is good for any man to know” and, unlike many of his more ignorant colleagues, had a “weakness for going among the natives.” A shallow reading of the work might lead to the conclusion that Strickland is presented as the antithesis to Fleete, as he is the rare British officer whose presence is harmonious with his surroundings and he is vocal against those who cause harm to the natives. On the contrary, this entire incident is as much a beastly transformation of Strickland as it is of Fleete. Strickland’s violent revenge against the Silver Man is deemed by the narrator to be too grotesque to even print and yet Strickland finds his actions hysterical enough to collapse in a fit of laughter. While Fleete’s transformation is out of his control and symbolizes his ignorance, Strickland’s beast-like actions are out of his own accord and symbolize the kind of cruelty that may not be outwardly discernible but may, in fact, be more dangerous. When Fleete’s transgression against Hanuman results in his inner beast manifesting itself in an alarming and grotesque manner, Strickland’s far more purposefully evil actions of torture against the Silver Man should warrant a more dramatic narrative. And yet, Kipling maintains the weak facade of Strickland’s respectability, perhaps to convey the idea that the irrational vileness of a beast lies within the wide spectrum of British personalities in India, from the unacquainted outsiders to the seemingly integrated noblemen. The perception of Strickland as one among these “integrated noblemen” is utilized for further dramatic irony. For all his affectations of cultural sensitivity, Strickland still considers “his business in life to [be overmatching natives] with their own weapons.” Strickland’s belief in his own capability to keenly observe the natives underlies another use of irony because he is the one who is plagued by the might of native “weapons” for the entirety of the plot and yet does not come close to even perceiving, let alone utilizing these weapons. The undervalued weaponry of cultural strength and societal tenacity bring about the moral downfall of even the most culturally knowledgeabule colonists because they are grounded in a spiritual ethos that is invisible to the calculating, mechanical vision of the British Empire. 

The character of the Silver Man is symbolic of the nameless, faceless masses over which the British rule and serves as a mirror to both the collectively subjugated natives and the hypocritical colonists. The reader is introduced to the Silver Man when he leaps out from “behind the image” of Hanuman “naked in [the] bitter cold”, “white as snow”, and without a clear face due to being a “leper of some years standing.” While this description seems to be unique to this character, it has a larger context in the British Empire’s attempt to reduce the sympathy towards their subjects by casting them as exotic, primitive, and even diseased. As a faceless character, the Silver Man simultaneously sheds light on the ostracizing manner in which the British view the colonized while also becoming the embodiment of all Indian natives due to his lack of specific individuality. Silver Man doesn’t speak but mews like an “otter,” implying the voiceless, powerless nature of existence of those subjected to British rule while also criticizing the British for being unsympathetic listeners who degrade the protests of the natives to animalistic mutterings that have no significance. Despite the Silver Man’s only act of violence being retaliatory rather than combative in nature, the gradual intensifying of Fleete’s beastly symptoms causes Strickland to lose all pretense of concern for the natives and he immediately characterizes the Silver Man as a criminal who must be punished. In this way, the Silver Man illuminates the moral weakness of supposedly upstanding, principled British men. In their procedure of brutal torture, Strickland and the narrator find vindication rather than guilt, claiming that they finally “understood...how men and women ...can endure to see a witch burnt alive.” This statement is yet another example of Kipling’s use of irony: even more than Strickland and the narrator, it must be the natives who can “endure” a “witch” such as Fleete being punished and, in fact, their sense of vindication is far more justified due to the offenses of such “witches” occurring on their very own land. This irony surrounding the conflict between Strickland and Silver Man allows us to see that the tireless efforts of the British to seek justice for their own kind leads to blindness towards the injustice they cause others. Silver Man is the defiant but ultimately vanquished rebel who attempts to battle this injustice rather than meekly surrender to it and for this, he must immediately be characterized as degenerate, primitive, and criminal, lest he becomes successful in his vengeance.

Thus, Kipling uses two pairs of powerfully opposed characters to explore his primary message. Even when disregarding Fleet’s cultural insensitivity, he displays generally brutish character: a personality trait that differentiates his narrative arc from Kipling’s somewhat dignified treatment of Strickland. Surprisingly, this makes the antagonistic pair of Fleet and Hanuman a less radical mechanism of Kipling’s message than that of Strickland and the Silver Man. To say that colonists who are blatantly offensive deserve to be viewed as beasts is a rather obvious reading that fails to draw the further conclusion that seemingly respectable colonists such as Strickland are equally beastly, if not more so. It is this fundamental yet subtly hidden implication that is inadequately explored in the existing literary analysis of “The Mark of The Beast,” including, but not limited to, “The Mark of the Beast: Rudyard Kipling’s Apocalyptic Vision of Empire” by Paul Battles. While Battles courageously contradicts previous critiques of Kipling’s work that consider him to be an imperialist, he still focuses the majority of his argument on the conflict between Fleete and Hanuman, relegating Strickland’s far more insidious hypocrisy towards the Silver Man to merely a secondary narrative. By underemphasizing the literary value of Strickland, Battles assumes that only colonists of obvious belligerence or insensitivity are worthy of critique and seems rather comfortable with the presence of colonials who associate with the British establishment and maintain a facade of respectability. In dividing his focus as such, Battles arrives at the weak, simplistic conclusion that the purpose of “The Mark of the Beast” is to dramatize “the impossibility of knowing India” and that this “lack of knowledge translates directly to a lack of power.” It's almost as if Battles perceives this story to be merely an elaborate comment of the ineffective strategy of the British rather than a definitive judgment of imperialism, and every individual who enables and benefits from it, as morally and spiritually reprehensible. 

In contention to the fragile conclusions offered by critics who rely heavily on surface-level symbolism, I argue that through the powerful and purposeful use of characterization and irony, Rudyard Kipling delivers a surprisingly severe moral indictment of British imperialism in all its forms. A close reading of “The Mark of the Beast” enables the reader to understand Kipling’s subliminal but decided answer to the moral question of British imperialism: every aspect of unwarranted British power is an act of violence and it must end.