24 pages • 48 minutes read
Rudyard KiplingThe Mark Of The Beast
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1890A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Mark of the Beast
The titular symbol represents the cultural rift between the English and the native Indian cultures. Each culture understands the mark of the beast differently. The Indians at the temple see Fleete as the true example of ignorance and uncivility. He is the beast who uses his cigar to mark and desecrate Hanuman, their venerated god. Strickland and the narrator see the Silver Man as a beast: a diseased creature that has lost its humanity. The two become beasts when they disregard the law, subdue the Silver Man as they would an animal, and violate him. Ironically, given the brutality they commit, they give the Silver Man a sheet to cover his nakedness to conform the Silver Man to their own now-stained English standards of morality.
Despite his physical repulsiveness, the Silver Man embodies the power of the deity: His bite marks Fleete with Hanuman’s revenge. Fleete’s mark appears as a “perfect double of the black rosettes—the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle—on a leopard’s hide” (243). The mark is literally identical to the mark of an animal.
Finally, the mark of the beast is an allusion to the biblical book of Revelation. The mark identifies the followers of the antichrist and is commonly believed to be the number 666. This number of the beast represents those who receive Satan’s mark: those whose souls are condemned. Each time the Silver Man “mews” outside the house, the beast that is Fleete struggles against his bonds. Strickland tells the narrator that if this exchange happens six times, he will act. The reference to the number six suggests Strickland connects the curse to the number of the beast. Strickland knows that the Silver Man cannot take Fleete’s life, but Fleete’s soul is indeed threatened by the mark. The other men watch Fleete’s human spirit disappear and then refer to Fleete as “it” and “the beast” rather than “him” (247). When the Silver Man retracts the curse, Strickland and the narrator see the “soul of Fleete coming back into the eyes” (249), suggesting he has been saved from a state of perdition.
The Silver Man
The leper priest represents the cultural opposite of the English colonizers and is therefore a threat to English rule. He epitomizes the “other,” or someone who is different from the majority. His leprosy alone makes him an object of fear and repulsion to the English. The disease has removed the appearance of his humanity: his face is a “slab” (249), his feet are stumps, and he has lost the ability to use speech, making animal-like sounds instead of language; as well, he wears no clothes. In the eyes of the English, the Silver Man is not fully a ‘man.’
Strickland and the narrator view the Silver Man as impure. In the Old Testament of the Bible, leprosy often represents sin, and individuals who contract it become pariahs, separated from God and their fellow humans for being unclean. While brutalizing the Silver Man, the narrator comments that “even through my riding-boots I could feel that his flesh was not the flesh of a clean man” (248). This quote also reveals the power imbalance between cultures: the English narrator has his booted foot on the Silver Man’s bare neck, a sign of dominance and oppression. The men use towels and gloves during their torture session to avoid touching the Silver Man’s diseased flesh; they believe that, this way, they can minimize the risk of contracting the disease themselves and losing their own humanity. Ironically, the act of torture itself compromises the humanity of the Englishmen, so their precautions prove to be futile.
The Silver Man frightens and disgusts Strickland and the narrator not only because of his disease, but also because of his supernatural or religious powers. The Silver Man is antithetical to their world view which is fact-based and rational. Though the Englishmen succeed in getting the Silver Man to reverse Fleete’s transformation, they have not triumphed over native culture. The Silver Man retains his power even after being coerced into removing the curse on Fleete.
Hanuman
Much like the Silver Man, Hanuman the Monkey-god symbolizes a religious belief that is fundamentally different and antithetical to English belief and understanding. While the colonizing Englishmen are monotheistic, Hinduism, depending on its denomination, has multiple gods that represent different forms of the one God, Brahman. Hanuman is the son of the wind-god, and according to legend, Hanuman led a monkey army to help Rama save his wife, Sita, from a demon. Hanuman represents strength and loyalty, which makes Fleete’s insulting gesture all the more offensive. Fleete’s decision to insult a representative object of Hanuman, instead of an actual person, suggests cowardice; as well, his arrogant display of derision is act of disloyalty against his fellow Englishmen who live in India and aspire to maintain a civil relationship with the people they have colonized.
According to the Englishmen in the story who subscribe to the doctrine of the Church of England, Hanuman may be a false idol, but his power appears to be real. Fleete, secure in his superior position as colonizer, displays contempt for the local gods, but he is punished for his disrespect. From the experience, Strickland and the narrator recognize that their own religion is not necessarily greater than the religion and the traditional beliefs that inform Indian culture. In this way, Hanuman’s revenge on Fleete is an ominous foreshadowing for the future of the British Empire in India.
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By Rudyard Kipling
