Kipling the trickster : knowingness practical jokes and the use of superior knowledge in Kiplings short stories This book is an exploration of the way in which the characters in Kiplings short stories use superior knowledge which often involves deception and the playing of practical jokes. It sets Kiplings use of the practical joke in the wider social context of his time. The book engages with a long standing critical tradition which treats the jokes as acts of vicarious revenge or symptoms of supposed defects in Kiplings personality. There was early critical hostility to the stance adopted by Kiplings characters that of a superior knowledge acquired by friendship with a small male circle. In this book Kiplings writing is examined for what it reveals about a complex self conscious but powerful range of values rather than what it is supposed to disguise or conceal. Although he endorsed British colonial rule Kipling was frank about the slackness the endemic rule breaking and the second rate nature of British India. He also criticised some of the widespread cultural religious and moral phenomena of his time which he thought harmful. Many of his short stories contain an implied but serious criticism of Victorian beliefs from attitudes to death beds and schoolboys to Positivism