History Creator / RudyardKipling

* "Mandalay" ("On the road to Mandalay / Where the flying fishes play")

---> If any question why we died,
---> Tell them, because our fathers lied.
---> -- ''Epitaphs of the War'', "Common Form"

* AlasPoorYorick:
** The ending of ''The Man Who Would Be King''.
** A rather... unconventional scene in ''The Ballad of Boh Da Thone''.

* BadCopIncompetentCop: Not much, but... one meets CoolAndUnusualPunishment in ''Steam Tactics''.
* BadLiar: The weather in "Danny Deever" is -- odd.

* ColdIron: The title of a poem. Note that in the text it is clear that "cold" is a conventional term for "iron."

* {{Discussed Trope}}s: Lots of. E.g.
** {{Demonization}}
---> What is the sense of 'ating those
---> 'Oom you are paid to kill?
* DontYouDarePityMe: "[[http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/comforters.html The Comforters]]".
-->So, when thine own dark hour shall fall,\\
Unchallenged canst thou say:\\
"I never worried ''you'' at all,\\
For God's sake go away!"

* {{Forgiveness}}: Central to the poem "Cold Iron".

* FunnyForeigner: Played with in nearly every way possible.

* GodGuise: ''The Man Who Would Be King''.

* KnightInSourArmor: The protagonist of ''Tommy''. Also a DeadpanSnarker.

* MamaBear: "The Female of the Species"
* MerchantCity: Peshawar in ''The Ballad of the King's Jest''

May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.

* NoHonorAmongThieves: "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers."
* NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe: Discussed in ''The King''.

* POVSequel: Several, including ''The Pirates in England'' vs. ''A Pict Song''.
* PragmaticHero[=/=]PragmaticVillainy : Depending on how you look at it. His idea of Imperialism was not so much to change local culture but to competently do mundane chores like economic development, policing and so on. Chesterton in ''Heretics'' noted that the key to understanding him is to remember that he romanticized [[ConsummateProfessional discipline and competence.]]
* RapeAndRevenge: "Raped and Revenged" in "Epitaphs of the War."
* TheRealHeroes: Frequently depicts enlisted men, ground-level bureaucrats, and their native counterparts in this light.
* RealityIsUnrealistic: Invoked in ''Light That Failed''. ''The Return ''.

* RomanticismVersusEnlightenment: Kipling represented both the good and bad parts of the Enlightenment side of the equation. He genuinely believed that Western imperialism was helping to improve the lives of non-Western "savages" by introducing things like modern science, democracy, and secularism. However, he presented this view in a way that today comes across as [[WhiteMansBurden condescending at best, and downright racist at worst]].
** That's not to say however he did not have a Romantic side: he admired the cultures of India and the soldiers, fishermen and railwaymen and how they lived their simple lives. Kipling seemed fascinated by anybody who lived different from him.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: ''Wilful-Missing''

* SilentRunningMode: They call it ''The Trade''.
* StarCrossedLovers:
** ''In Flood Time''.
** ''Beyond The Pale''.
* StiffUpperLip: "If..." is one of the [[TropeCodifier trope codifiers]].

* TooDumbToLive: A lot of characters, e.g. Pagett, M.P.:
--> He spoke of the heat of India as the "Asian Solar Myth";
--> Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East," in November,
--> [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment And I got him to sign an agreement vowing to stay till September.]]

* TrueArtIsAngsty: InUniverse. ''In the Neolithic Age'' elaborately mocked {{flamewar}}s over styles.
** LighterAndSofter: ''The Light that Failed'':
--->'''Nilghai''': It’s a chromo,’ said he,--’a chromo-litholeo-margarine fake!
** ExecutiveMeddling: ''The Light that Failed'', the same incident.
--->'''Dick''': Then the art-manager of that abandoned paper said that his subscribers wouldn’t like it. It was brutal and coarse and violent,--man being naturally gentle when he’s fighting for his life. They wanted something more restful, with a little more colour. I could have said a good deal, but you might as well talk to a sheep as an art-manager.
* TrueCompanions: ''The Galley-Slave'' is about the brotherhood between a crew of galley slaves.
--> To the bench that broke their manhood, they shall lash themselves and die.
* UnableToSupportAWife:
** "The Post That Fitted".
** "In the Pride of His Youth".
* UndignifiedDeath: "The Ballad of the King's Mercy."

* UnusualEuphemism: [[strike:Deserters]] ''Wilful-Missing''.
* UriahGambit: "The Story of Uriah" is about trick being pulled on someone in colonial India.

* TheVamp: named by "The Vampire" and popularized by the 1915 silent film ''A Fool There Was'', which quoted liberally from the Kipling poem.

* WorthyOpponent: ''The Ballad of East and West''

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English writer and Nobel prize winner, born in [[UsefulNotes/{{Mumbai}} Bombay]], UsefulNotes/{{India}}, during UsefulNotes/TheRaj.

* "The Vampire" ("A fool there was...")

* RatedMForManly: His poem simply entitled "''If--''" is about as good a summary as you can get for what it takes to be a virtuous and well-adjusted manly man. Also a good account of what it takes to be a KnightInShiningArmour in the modern world.

-->--'''If...'''

* GenreDeconstruction: ''The Gods of the Copybook Headings''.

* MightyWhitey: Sometimes. Mostly they get to meet white guys who aren't.
** The [[MightyWhitey White Seal]] brings enlightenment back to all those darker-colored seals, and has to [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking knock some sense into their heads]] besides.

Although this should not be taken, [[CommonKnowledge as it has in recent years]] that Kipling in any way opposed the war, or that he was anti-war. Kipling supported British entry into UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, wrote propaganda on its behalf, and after the war fully supported the Treaty of Versailles, and vehemently criticizing the British Parliament for not supporting UsefulNotes/{{France}}'s position in more strictly enforcing the conditions of the treaty. Kipling grieved like any father did, but he never regretted Britain's participation in the war, nor did he repudiate its role and function as TheEmpire. Indeed he felt that the British Empire, in alliance with France and America was more essential than ever with the rise of Bolshevism and Nazism. He believed in UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory false allegations that the Labour party was a Communist front (it wasn't) but he also opposed Oswald Moseley and Nazism.

And what is more, Kipling was an innovator in the short story form, a prolific author of many stories and tales, and avoiding SturgeonsLaw for a good number of them. In PopCulturalOsmosis, Kipling is best known as the creator of Mowgli, star of ''Literature/TheJungleBook'', popularized and immortalized by its [[WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967 cartoon]] and [[Film/TheJungleBook2016 live-action adaptations]].

* NeverLiveItDown: InUniverse in ''A Code of Morals'', a tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale about communications security. A moment of chatter on the heliograph line results in:
-->But the tale is on the Frontier, and from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Agency Michni]] to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multan Mooltan]]\\
They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."

* NonNaziSwastika: Most editions of Kipling's books published before the 1930s often have left-hand swastikas on the title pages. Of course, once Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power, he stopped using them.