Thrown Away

"Thrown Away" is the title of a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the first Indian edition of "Plain Tales from the Hills" in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

It is the story of an unnamed 'Boy' who has been brought up under the "'sheltered life system'", of which Kipling disapproves: he has been protected from all unpleasantness, and has never been toughened, nor learnt "The proper proportions of things". He goes to India, having done less well than his parents hoped at Sandhurst, and becomes a subaltern in a regiment out there. "This Boy - the tale is as old as the hills - came out and took all things seriously": he quarrels, and remembers disagreements; he gambles; he flirts, and is too serious; he loses money and health; he is reprimanded by his Colonel. When, finally, he is insulted (thoughtlessly) by a woman, he contemplates, and then asks for shooting leave, to go after Big Game where only partridge are to be found. He takes a revolver.

A Major (also nameless) who has taken an interest in the Boy returns from his own leave, and fearing the worst presses the narrator to go with him to visit the Boy. ("'Can you lie?'", the Major asks; "'You know best,' I answered. 'It's my profession'" says the journalist Kipling, ever self-deprecating.) After a furious drive, they find the Boy dead, by suicide - as the Major had feared. They bury him, concocting a story of cholera. They bury the Boy discreetly. Finding letters he has written to the Colonel and Home - to his parents, and to a girl, which move them to tears; but they burn them, and concoct a letter to the Boy's mother, telling the lie about cholera, and opthers about his great promise, etc., which earns her undying gratitude - "the obligation she would be under to us as long as she lived." "All things considered, she was under an obligation, but not exactly as she meant." The Major reveals the cause of his concern - he too had despaired when he was young, and he sympathised with the Boy.

Kipling is at pains to suggest not only the "White Man's burden" - that India, in this case, makes high demands on the rulers. The story also has keen psychological observations (the combined laughter and choking fits of the conspirators as the prepare their lies) and telling narrative detail (although they are tired, the Major and the narrator remember to "put away [the Boy's] revolver with the proper amount of cartridges in the pouch" in his room (my emphasis).

:All quotations in this article have been taken from the "Uniform Edition" of "Plain Tales from the Hills" published by Macmillan & Co., Limited in London in 1899. The text is that of the third edition (1890), and the author of the article has used his own copy of the 1923 reprint. Further comment, including page-by-page notes, can be found [http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_thrownaway1.htm here on the Kipling Society's website] .