Kim - Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Joseph Kipling was born in Bombay, India in 1865. He lived in India during the height of the British Empire so that the story of his life takes place against a background of imperial grandeur, followed by war and decline ( Fido 1). While living in India, Kipling wrote his best works. Looking closely, one sees that Kipling wrote about India all his life; almost exclusively in his youth, but many years after he returned to England for good, he was still looking back to India and reexamining the Imperial experience (Bauer xii). In 1907, Rudyard Kipling became the first English author to win a Nobel Prize for literature. Kipling’s brilliant works, although mostly children’s books, forced even his harshest critics to acknowledge his genius. In his later years his fame declined but, he has always had an attentive audience of readers, and has never been out of print. Brilliant, prolific, and still controversial, Rudyard Kipling remains one of the most widely popular authors in lit

By birth Kim is white, an Irish boy, whose father was a soldier in an Irish regiment. But, he has grown up as an orphan on the streets of Lahore, 'a poor white of the very poorest' . With his skin 'burned black as any native' he looks and lives like a low-caste Hindu street-urchin, unable to read or write, or speak English very well, and known to all as 'Little Friend of all the World' ( ClassicNotes ) . This feeds into the universal theme of the struggle to find one’s self. Kim’s journey to find his own identity, and fulfill his destiny is the main point of all his trials and adventures. Kim defines his identity by being open to influences and finding people he can look up to, like the lama, and Colonel Creighton while warding off influences that he does not feel he can look up to. At the beginning of the story, the influences on him have been almost completely Indian. He has grown up dressing like an Indian, thinking like one, his skin burned as brown as an Indian's, and being happy at home among the poor people of Lahore. But even then he did not see himself as a native. He remembers his father and his prophecy, and he carries his identity papers in a leather amulet case around his neck. Inwardly, his attitude is that of a white ruler ( Bloom 126). The opening paragraph showing him sitting astride the cannon shows that he feels it natural to claim the position of power, a position he asserts with a game of 'king-of-the-castle' in which he prevents the native boys, both Moslem and Hindu, from taking his place ( Bloom 126). This also shows evidence of the authors Imperial upbringing, and feelings of European superiority. Kim’s white blood, his identity papers, and his tendency to own and rule will prove to be central to the identity he is seeking to build, but neither at the beginning nor the end does he think of himself as a 'sahib' ( ClassicNotes). In chapter 5, when he finally finds the 'Nine hundred first-class devils, whose God was a Red Bull on a green field', (his father's old regiment - the red bull on a green field being their flag), he is captured by the soldiers and his first instinct is to escape back to the lama at all costs (ClassicNotes). This is Kim’s first encounter with white men Kim has had in his life, and Kipling uses it to show a clash of native and British mentality, with Kim and the lama showing the native side, and the members of the regiment showing aspects of British mentality. The native view of white men is shown in many ways: 'But this is sorcery!' (Ch.5 p.129) exclaims the lama seeing the tents going up in the field when the soldiers pitch camp. 'It was as he suspected. The Sahibs prayed to their God' (Ch.5 p.131) thinks Kim when he sees the soldiers in their mess tent with a model of their mascot, the bull, and later when he is introduced to Catholicism he sees it as 'an entirely new set of Gods and Godlings' (Ch.7 p.165).

lama, wandered into Lahore looking for Buddhist relics in a museum. The lama is on a quest to find the holy “River of the Arrow” which supposedly sprang from an arrow shot by Buddha. Anyone who bathes in this river shall be cleansed of all sin. The location of this river is unknown and he is on a quest to find it . Kim is fascinated by the stranger, and the lama assumed that Kim had been sent to him as his ‘chela’, or disciple. Kim accepts this and joins him on his journey. Kim thought that while on this holy quest, he could fulfill his own desti

Some topics in this essay:
India Kipling, Colonel Creighton, Service Bauer, Arrow’ Kim, Colour Sergeant, Kim' Kim, Darkness Ch5, Lama Tibetan, East West, ClassicNotes Kim’s, colonel creighton, esoteric privileged, privileged position, identity papers, kim lama, esoteric privileged position, secret service, kipling’s writing style, adopts attitude, streets lahore, understood select, mission understood, lama quest holy, imperial experience bauer, mission understood select,