Stalky & Co

Description

Stalky & Co: A Book about Reaching Maturity and Dealing with the Harshness of Life at a Young Age



There aren’t many books that focus as genuinely on the problems that young boys went through as they began discovering the more concrete side of life while in school. This is the case with Stalky & Co, a novel that Rudyard Kipling wrote as a compilation of several previously published stories, mainly about the adventures and realizations of three young boys studying at an unnamed college, simply referred to as The College, or The Coll.

Representing Kipling’s own experiences at the United Services College, Stalky & Co is a story that is based on a number of famous and notable personalities, including George Charles Beresford, Lionel Dunsternville, and Kipling himself.

The story is hardly childish or superficial. Kipling paints himself as one of the main characters, and manages to illustrate how school can often be considered one of the main building blocks for all later experiences in life. His character, Beetle, is part of a trio of boys who face a number of adventures and experiences while at school. Ranging from bullying, to some of the most unusual, surprising and often macabre happenings one might encounter in a story about college boys, Stalky & Co is definitely not your usual cup of tea. In fact, it is deeply symbolic in some areas, and it can also be an incredibly freeing, educational and empowering reading experience.

The old schoolboy slang, good pace and detailed, genuine descriptions that Kipling introduces are designed to help immerse the reader into a word that has passed a long time ago. While the points that the author makes about bullying, punishment and violence in school may be controversial when viewed in contrast with the schools of today, many of the ideas he seeks to express and exemplify are still of actuality today, and the novel itself is as entertaining as it is insightful.
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