Kipling’s writing style in “The Man Who Would Be King” changes depending on who is telling the story—the narrator or Carnehan. When writing for the narrator, Kipling’s style is more formal and erudite, demonstrating the narrator’s sensibilities as an educated journalist. Take the following passage, for example, which comes after the narrator has met both Carnehan and Dravot while traveling and worries about their blackmailing scheme they told him about:
Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they forgathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they blackmailed one of the little rat-trap states of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties.
Kipling’s writing style here communicates that the narrator is well-educated—he refers to the men as “gentlemen” and uses formal language like “forgathered” and “personated.” He worries about the two men but with intellectual and emotional distance, the way a journalist might be concerned about the subjects of a story they’re covering. That said, he still refers to South Asian regions as “rat-traps,” demonstrating that for as sophisticated as he is, he still reproduces racist ideologies.
During the lengthy part of the story in which Carnehan narrates his and Dravot’s time in Kafiristan (speaking to the journalist in his office), Kipling’s writing style shifts significantly. The following passage—which comes near the beginning of Carnehan’s story when he and Dravot first get to Kafiristan—demonstrates the difference between the styles:
“Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They was fair men — fairer than you or me — with yellow hair and remarkable well built.”
Here Kipling’s writing style becomes much more informal as he tries to capture Carnehan’s lower-class dialect. He spells “tremendous” as “tremenjus” and uses incorrect grammar, stating, “They was fair men” rather than “They were fair men.” Carnehan's sections of the story also involve much more figurative language (like similes, hyperboles, and idioms) than the narrator's do.
