The Mark Of The Beast

Strickland has lived in India for a long time. He has accumulated a wealth of knowledge about the Indian people and their customs—perhaps even too great a knowledge, the narrator jokes, perceiving Strickland’s understanding as a “weakness.” Though Strickland empathizes with the Indians, his openness does not diminish Strickland’s loyalty to Britain, however; it is Strickland’s job to utilize his understanding of native culture to “overmatch” the Indian people “with their own weapons” (243). Although many Indian individuals know Strickland, he remains an outsider to them as he represents the colonizer who manages and governs the colonized. He has a take-charge attitude and appreciates friendship, horses, and a good pipe.

Like the narrator, Strickland respects the beliefs of the Indian people. He is “silent and wrathful” (243) at Fleete’s offense, knowing that Fleete’s behavior reflects poorly upon them as Englishmen, damages his own reputation, and puts them in danger. Strickland, like the narrator, believes in logic and facts, but he is more open to the possibility of the supernatural than the narrator. Strickland is initially “baffled” by the priests’ reactions in the temple but uses the physical evidence before him to reach the correct, if seemingly implausible, conclusion. He, unlike Dr. Dumoise, recognizes that Fleete’s transformation “isn’t any doctor’s work” (247). Strickland understands that the scientific advancements of the English do not have the power to restore Fleete to his previous health. Despite his appreciation for the supernatural, Strickland is grounded in the physical, and he turns to it to solve the problem at hand: He goes beyond the parameters of civilized English law and resorts to physical violence—the most basic act of domination—to respond to the threat to Fleete’s humanity. 

Fleete, a “big, heavy, genial” (241) man comes to India to finance the land he inherited from his uncle. He is unfamiliar with the country and its people, and he struggles with the language. The narrator calls Fleete “inoffensive,” which is ironic, given the huge offense he commits against the native deity of Hanuman.

Fleete represents the ignorance and violence of the colonizer towards their subjects. He is condescending to the temple priests, patting them drunkenly on the back before desecrating the temple and comparing “good old Hanuman” (241) to a nice pillow. Fleete is comfortable in his position of superiority, and he treats the Indian people and their beliefs with patronizing disrespect. Though he becomes an object of the others’ pity and revulsion, his cavalier attitude returns when his humanity returns. Fleete has no memory of the punishment enacted upon him by the Silver Man, which suggests he has not learned any lesson or reached any greater understanding about native culture. He ruefully advises the others not to mix their liquors, thinking his loss of time and memory is the result of mere drunkenness. He remains a colonizer, but Kipling shows that this position is vulnerable. 

Dr. Dumoise is kind, “good little man” (247) who witnesses Fleete’s bestial transformation and can attest to the facts of Fleete’s symptoms. The fact that the narrator uses a diminutive, “little,” to describe Dumoise demonstrates both Dumoise’s small stature and also the limited scope of his philosophy. Dumoise believes that Fleete has contracted hydrophobia and that there is nothing science can do to cure him. The next day, when Dumoise finds Fleete alive and in his right mind, he is “unprofessionally shocked.” The narrator explains that the doctor, however, reached an “incorrect conclusion” in his diagnosis. Nothing in Dumoise’s scientific background can explain Fleete’s medically impossible recovery. Dumoise’s crisis of understanding reflects the theme of disconnect between cultures and represents the dichotomized powers of science and religion.