The story of Captains Courageous, like that of the earlier Jungle Book, is of a boy who finds himself in a new environment and is profoundly affected by the experience. On 11 February Caroline Kipling noted that Captains Courageous was `taking shape’ (A Kipling Companion), and Kipling continued to write rapidly. The local doctor, James Conland, had been telling Kipling about his time on a schooner, thirty years before, and this seems to have been the stimulus.

Kipling’s belief that he had changed his style and used allegory, parable, and metaphor to suit his subject is at odds with the common assumption about Captains Courageous: that Kipling produced a book whose tension is confined to the two opening chapters, and that his employment ofĬomplex nautical terminology, particularly in Chapter III, has rendered it opaque.Ĭomposition of Captains Courageous probably began in early February 1896 when the Kiplings were living at Naulakha, their home in Vermont. `For this’, went on Kipling, `did I change my style and allegorize and parable and metaphor.’ Research and Compositionįew critics of Captains Courageous have seen it in quite that way, although some have been inclined to agree with Kipling ( Letters of Rudyard Kipling ii, 323) that it is `thin, and tinny, and without passion’. Why, hang it! that’s his own very country and in half a dozen words he gets at the nub of the thing I was laboriously painting in C. Relief from the material cares of the Elder Peoples at the cost of what the Elder Peoples mean by life! And again `There is an almost incredible insignificance in parts of it, as if it were a steamer underengined on its length’. Had I gone about with a lantern to describe America I could not have hit on a more splendid description than `relief at the cost of life’. Interpreting `relief’ in his own way, Kipling explained his position to an American friend, Charles Eliot Norton: These were, he said, exactly the qualities which he associated with the United States. There is an almost incredible lack of significance in parts of it, as if it were a steamer underengined for its length.’ Kipling was startled by the reviewer’s strictures. The Atlantic critic complained that, although the book achieved `relief from the go-fever and insistence of Kipling’s earlier work, `it is relief procured at the cost of life…. The weather was inclement, he had an atrocious cold, and a review of Captains Courageous in the Atlantic Monthly (LXXX Dec 1897, pp 856/7) had left him smarting. In December 1897 Rudyard Kipling was in low spirits.

Captains courageous book