In his poem "The Hyenas" Ruyard Kipling uses the hyenas as an extended metaphor to show the disregard that humans have for life and death. The hyenas are trying to survive, while humans throw life away through war and other senseless acts of violence. The words that he chooses to use exemplify this disregard for human life.

War causes many causalities, and the dead serve as food for other species, like hyenas. The value of life to other humans is low; while, the value of death is high to the hyenas. It is the source of their survival. The soldiers of a king, who die in battle, are often buried on the battlefield where they die. Humans have a low regard for life when they are in the middle of a war; the enemy must die, and causalities will occur in order to win. Humans kill each other mercilessly; there is no benefit to the killing.

Kipling uses the hyenas as a metaphor for the way humans regard life. The hyenas devour humans as a means for survival, "they know that the dead are safer meat", they are not aware of the horror that their act possesses (1893). The dead provide safer meat for the hyenas because they will not fight back; the hyenas can have meat for their survival without the risk and the danger associated with hunting live creatures for meat. The dead cannot fight back against the hyenas, just like they cannot fight back against their fellow man, after they are dead. The dead cannot control what happens to their bodies after death. Similar to the lack of control over their physical bodies, the dead are also not capable of controlling what people say about them after their deaths. The dead soldiers that are left behind cannot protect themselves for the hyenas who "defile" their physical bodies, nor can they control the actions of other humans who "defile" their reputations. Hyenas look for the easiest way to survive; they are scavengers that clean up a mess left behind by people. Kipling says, "The wise hyenas come out at eve/To take account of our dead. /How he died and why he died/Troubles them not a whit"(1893). The hyenas are smart because they attempt to feed off of meat that is easy to obtain and that is the least threatening to their own lives. The hyenas are trying to survive. Humans are not worried about the lives lost on a battlefield, unlike the hyena, that looks for the easiest and safest way to obtain food. People declare war without thought to the lives that will be lost; the wise hyenas, on the other hand, are trying to ensure their survival by finding food that will not hurt them. They find the easiest meat that they can, because "…a goat may butt, and a worm may sting, / and a child will sometimes stand; /But a poor dead soldier of a king/Can never lift a hand" (1893). The hyena finds the safest food it can in order to assure its survival. Humans will not avoid confrontation like the hyena; they will push until a resolution is found, even if death is the result.

Kipling uses his metaphor to show that hyenas are not showing disrespect to the slain, they are simply trying to survive; they are "resolute [that] they shall eat/That they and their mates will thrive…" (1893). Hyenas are not capable of reason in the human sense and are therefore not aware that what they are doing is bad; they have no knowledge of human morality. On the other hand, humans can judge right and wrong. No one knows what is happening:

Hyenas are not trying to be vicious; they are trying to survive. Man is horrible to himself; Kipling is showing that man is his own enemy. People hurt each other and corrupt the reputations of those who cannot defend themselves. Society is the evil in the world, not animals such as hyenas. The hyenas are just trying to survive in the world, while humans kill for power, money, and land. Kipling demonstrates his outrage at the way humans treat one another in the last two lines. His ending of the poem leaves the reader not with the image of the way hyenas treat the dead, but the way humans treat each other. Throughout the poem, Kipling makes the hyenas sound like vicious, uncaring scavengers, but with the last two lines of the poem he portrays humans as being worse than the hyenas. He says that humans have no regard for the dead; mankind is greedy and does not kill each other for survival, but for personal, political, and economic gain.

The words that Kipling chooses to use in his poem indicate that the reader should see the poem as a commentary on the view that humans have about life and death. He uses phrases like "our dead", "poor dead soldier of the king", "tug the corpse to life", and "defile the dead man’s name—/That is reserved for his kind" (1893-1894). Kipling is speaking against war; he is showing that it is horrible because death on the battlefield leads to disgrace after burial. Soldiers lose their lives in battle and afterward are forgotten and left behind. Mankind does not value life as sacred, and Kipling explores this idea in his poem because the hyenas are allowed to defile the bodies of the dead instead of the soldiers receiving a proper burial.

The extended metaphor in Ruyard Kipling’s poem "The Hyenas" shows the way that humans view life as expendable. The hyenas devour the dead for survival, while humans waste many lives in war. Humans provide the hyenas with food because of their struggles for power, wealth, and land. Hyenas defile the physical body, while humans defile the names of the dead. The hyenas do not care who the person was that is now food for them, much the same as a fallen soldier is forgotten by the world he died for. The words Kipling uses in his poem support the disregard humans show for life. His words have negative connotations that exude a sense of disrespect and waste of human lives.