Three Ways of Going Wrong: Kipling, Conrad, Coetzee

Abstract

This investigation of the theme of 'going wrong' in colonial discourse examines two Indian stories from Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. A myth of empire is identified in the transgressive figure of the man who jeopardizes his own people's identity and prestige by becoming too closely involved in 'native life', and on his relationship with a second, more law-abiding figure who forms a misgiving bond with him. It is argued that the tension and the kinship between these figures of law and transgression indicate a fault-line in the nature of empire itself.