“Words are of course the most powerful drug used by mankind.” -Rudyard Kipling
One of the greatest authors of his time, Rudyard Kipling left his mark on the world of literature. Although he is most famous for his authoring of The Jungle Book, Kipling wrote short stories, poems, and children’s books. Moreover, Kipling is accredited for writing over 300 works of literature, many of which are still analyzed and read today. Born on December 30, 1865 in Bombay, India to British parents, Alice Macdonald and John Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard Kipling was the oldest child, having only one other sibling, Beatrice “Trix” Kipling. After Kipling turned six his parents sent him and his younger sister to England where he spent time at a boarding school called Lorne Lodge, which they later called “House of Desolation”. Kipling’s unorthodox upbringing, completely separated from his parents, caused the somewhat resentful outlook he had towards his parental figures; for they left him with a “sense of betrayal” (Cody web). Five to six years later, Kipling was able to leave the boarding home and study at the United Services College at Westward Ho in North Devon. Although this boarding school was not much different from the previous, Kipling’s love for literature
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Kipling published an enormous amount of works and by 1892 he was one of the most acclaimed authors of the time, and fifteen years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Specific traumatic events in his life such as the death of his eldest child as well as his only son and his feelings of abandonment when his parents left him in boarding school could have contributed to his writings, for example in his well renowned poem “If” where he uses a didactic manner to explain what it takes to be a “man”(32) and how to be a decent human being (Bardhan