Rudyard Kipling is remembered not just as an author but as a spokesperson for an era. Perhaps because of his dual status, literary scholars tend to treat Kipling's aesthetics and his imperialism as two separate domains. While such a bifurcated analytical strategy will certainly aid the literary critic in achieving a conveniently twofold general assessment of the author, this imaginary divide fails to reflect the subtle ways in which art and ideology cohere in Kipling's literary works. In this paper I will examine Kipling's short story "The Bridge-Builders," specifically focusing on how bridge-building serves as a metaphorical expression of imperialism. Once I have demonstrated the bridge's metaphorical role, I will analyze the metonymies that lend essential interpretive background to this metaphor, thereby providing a more nuanced understanding of the story. From the critic's perspective, analysis of the bridge-building metaphor will reaffirm Kipling's notorious role as propagandist for the imperialist cause. Examination of metonymy, however, reveals another side of Kipling: his idealistic vision for imperial reform. At the theoretical level, this examination of the interplay between metaphor and metonymy will demonstrate how a reader's seemingly unprompted understanding of metaphor in narrative context may actually be decisively shaped by subtle metonymic cues. (Daniel Strack)