Talk:Soldiers Three

Period/geographic inappropriate analysis?

This passage is a bit implausible: "The books reveal a side of the British Tommy in Afghanistan rarely seen in the Twilight of the British Empire. The soldiers comment on their betters, act the fool, but cut straight to the rawness of war in the mid-east as the British began to loosen their Imperial hold." On the whole that combination of foolishness and rawness, and boisterousness yet ambivalence about soldiering for empire, is pretty typical of Kipling, not sure it's specific to these tales. "Mid-east" is rather a non-standard way of referring to India, even then. Lastly it's tough to see the turn of the 20th century as a period in which Britain's hold on India is particularly loosening, not without a big bucket of hindsight and a particularly coloured lens. If the stories were set after 1918, that would be a better analysis, but they're not. One might better say that Kipling always had a sense of the constant low grade war in India even at the height of the Raj, and the challenges of a diverse subcontinent. But it would be way too period-biased to paint these tales as a conscious effort to fictionalize a narrative of already anticipated decline. Kipling's understanding of what he saw in India proved remarkably insightful for short exposure in youth, but he wasn't that clairvoyant. Random noter (talk) 04:21, 5 July 2021 (UTC)