# The Stranger-man — Just So Stories character guide

> The Stranger-man in Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** the Stranger-man, the Stranger

**First appearance:** 0007-how-the-first-letter-was-written

## Snapshot

A courteous Tewara tribesman who runs himself ragged delivering a child's picture-letter and is repaid with mud, hair-pulling, and a sitting-upon.

## Who they are

The Stranger-man is a Tewara — not of Tegumai's tribe — who happens to be passing when Taffy needs a messenger, and who accepts the birch-bark drawing in good faith. He arrives panting and polite at the Cave, only to be flattened by six Neolithic ladies who read the picture as a confession of murder. His bewildered endurance of the misunderstanding, and the two deerskins Tegumai later pays him, make him the story's quiet hinge: proof that a message can travel perfectly and still be read entirely wrong.

## In the story

### [How the Whale Got His Throat](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/chapters/how-the-whale-got-his-throat)

The shipwrecked Mariner, a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity, who outwits the whale.

### [How the First Letter Was Written](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/chapters/how-the-first-letter-was-written)

The Stranger-man delivers Taffy's picture letter to Teshumai, leading to a misunderstanding and his capture.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_stranger_man
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters