Rudyard Kipling’s book Stalky & Co. is about young men attending a British boarding school. Three young main characters in this collection of school stories have a smug, cynical attitude toward authority and patriotism. After the stories were featured in periodicals for the preceding two years, it was first published in 1899.
Part I of ‘Slaves of the Lamp.’ Mr. King interrupts the three boys while they are practicing a pantomime of ‘Aladdin’ because he has discovered jokes Beetle wrote about him. When the younger child who taught King the poems is there, he drags Beetle into his study and corrects him. Stalky gets an intoxicated carter to throw stones at King by shooting him with a catapult. In ‘An Unsavoury Interlude, ‘ Mr. King makes fun of Beetle for once being frightened to take a bath in the ocean, which causes the boys from Mr. King’s house to call the boys from Mr. Prout’s house ‘stinkers.’Many lads take part eagerly in order to train for their future professions as military officers. But when a member of parliament is asked to speak at the school on ‘patriotism, ‘ he angers the lads by raising the Union Jack. The cadet corps left the next morning under Stalky’s leadership. The majority of Kipling’s characters, who are now about thirty, are soldiers or civil officials in India.
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