When Carnehan is telling the narrator about his argument with Dravot over whether or not to find wives in Kafiristan, he uses a simile to compare Dravot to a devil, as seen in the following passage:
‘For the last time o’ asking, Dan, do not,’ I says. ‘It’ll only bring us harm. The Bible says that Kings ain’t to waste their strength on women, ’specially when they’ve got a new raw Kingdom to work over.’
‘For the last time of answering I will,’ said Dravot, and he went away through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil, the sun being on his crown and beard and all.
When Carnehan states that Dravot looked “like a big red devil” as he walked away through the trees, he is both helping readers to picture the scene (since the red color came from the “sun being on his crown” and red facial hair) and also communicating his frustration with Dravot in this moment. While Dravot thinks it’s time for the two of them to find wives, Carnehan wants to stick to the contract they signed stating they would not pursue women until they were established kings. As he says, the two of them have “a new raw Kingdom to work over,” so now is not the time to think about women.
This moment is significant as it signals the moral split between the two men—Dravot is driven by selfish desires (therefore behaving in a “devilish” manner) and Carnehan is driven by a desire to rule Kafiristan effectively. Dravot’s pride is ultimately his downfall as he seeks to control the Kafiris rather than “civilize” them, as Carnehan does. While both approaches are built off a racist view of the Kafiris as inferior colonial subjects, Kipling is communicating that Carnehan’s approach is the more moral option.
When Carnehan is telling the narrator about how he and Dravot threatened the people of Kafiristan with violence in order to control them, he uses a simile to capture their reaction, as seen in the following passage:
“Then we asks the names of things in their lingo — bread and water and fire and idols and such, and Dravot leads the priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot.
“Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and told Dravot in dumb show what it was about. ‘That’s just the beginning,’ says Dravot. ‘They think we’re Gods.’”
The simile here—in which Carnehan says the Kafirs were “all turning up the land as quiet as bees”—implies that, in the face of being threatened with being shot, the villagers became more docile. That they are “turning up the land” quietly also suggests that they are following the two men’s agricultural production instructions.
This moment is notable as it highlights the contradictions of colonialism. Carnehan and Dravot believe that they are “civilizing” violent “savages,” when, in reality, they are hypocritically bringing their own forms of (gun-based) violence into these communities.
