The legion of the lost ones…
Kipling has been called “the poet of the Empire”, but his sympathies have been not with the self-satisfied Establishment types but with those individuals who could not adapt to the great and magnificent order, “the men who don’t fit in”.
Some of his best-remembered short stories are ‘Soldiers Three’ – about drunks and dog-stealers, or ‘The Man who Would be King’ – about two soldiers of fortune who did not fit in the British Empire, so set out to establish an empire of their own. Kipling likewise wrote poems that describe and empathize with people whose character could not fit life in normal society, including ‘The Prodigal Son’, ‘Gentlemen-Rankers’ and ‘The Broken Men’.
Another kind of misfits are men who have willingly given up love and friendship in the quest for wealth and power, who have decided that “he travels the fastest who travels alone” (one of Kipling’s best-known phrases). Kipling portrays such men in the poem ironically titled ‘The Winners’.