Rudyard Kipling's Kim.
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 literary history (Page 1). Kipling's greatest influences on his works were his own life experiences. Many of his stories have Indian settings, and are largely political, focusing frequently on men, battle, and the Imperial experience (Bauer xiv). The three major aspects in Rudyard Kipling's Kim are character, style, and theme. .
Kim gives a vivid picture of the complexities in India under British rule ( College Term Papers). The time in which this story takes place is around the late nineteenth century in British India. Most of the scenes take place in the wilderness and on the streets of Lahore. Kimball O"hara, or Kim, is the main character of the story.
