by Rudyard Kipling
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APPEARANCE
65:26-65:30
IDENTITY
Generally speaking, I love that Jack’s one direct literary reference is to one of the most openly imperialist, racist (yes, racist), and sexist poems of all time. Kipling may have had many endearing and honourable qualities, but this piece is thorough enough in its ignorant and shallow opinion and its revelation about the man’s inner philosophy for us to dismiss any notion of its being a subtle or nuanced view of its subject. This is a blindingly offensive piece, almost even within the context of its time and place, a mere 80 years before Jack’s utterance. Even the doubtlessly racist British aristocracy knew better than to use it for its intended purpose: celebrating the queen’s diamond jubilee.
SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE
Anyhow, the piece also has a few possible thematic connections to the film’s subtext. It has the opposite effect of the subtext of The Johnson House, Hanover, where a South Pacific Oceanic nation expressed a (possibly ironic) desire to be colonized.
Also, Kipling was the author of Captains Courageous, the novel that inspired the film that The Catcher in the Rye references. Kipling’s novel Kim, considered his masterpiece by some, inspired the game known as Kim’s Game, where you look at a tray of assorted items, then the same tray with pieces removed, to guess which are now gone. Anyone who’s looked into how many things disappearance and reappear throughout the film should see the connection.
Next literary reference: Car and Driver
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