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Summary
Summary
Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road.
Summary
Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road.
Author Notes
Kipling, who as a novelist dramatized the ambivalence of the British colonial experience, was born of English parents in Bombay and as a child knew Hindustani better than English. He spent an unhappy period of exile from his parents (and the Indian heat) with a harsh aunt in England, followed by the public schooling that inspired his "Stalky" stories. He returned to India at 18 to work on the staff of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette and rapidly became a prolific writer. His mildly satirical work won him a reputation in England, and he returned there in 1889. Shortly after, his first novel, The Light That Failed (1890) was published, but it was not altogether successful.
In the early 1890s, Kipling met and married Caroline Balestier and moved with her to her family's estate in Brattleboro, Vermont. While there he wrote Many Inventions (1893), The Jungle Book (1894-95), and Captains Courageous (1897). He became dissatisfied with life in America, however, and moved back to England, returning to America only when his daughter died of pneumonia. Kipling never again returned to the United States, despite his great popularity there.
Short stories form the greater portion of Kipling's work and are of several distinct types. Some of his best are stories of the supernatural, the eerie and unearthly, such as "The Phantom Rickshaw," "The Brushwood Boy," and "They." His tales of gruesome horror include "The Mark of the Beast" and "The Return of Imray." "William the Conqueror" and "The Head of the District" are among his political tales of English rule in India. The "Soldiers Three" group deals with Kipling's three musketeers: an Irishman, a Cockney, and a Yorkshireman. The Anglo-Indian Tales, of social life in Simla, make up the larger part of his first four books.
Kipling wrote equally well for children and adults. His best-known children's books are Just So Stories (1902), The Jungle Books (1894-95), and Kim (1901). His short stories, although their understanding of the Indian is often moving, became minor hymns to the glory of Queen Victoria's empire and the civil servants and soldiers who staffed her outposts. Kim, an Irish boy in India who becomes the companion of a Tibetan lama, at length joins the British Secret Service, without, says Wilson, any sense of the betrayal of his friend this actually meant. Nevertheless, Kipling has left a vivid panorama of the India of his day.
In 1907, Kipling became England's first Nobel Prize winner in literature and the only nineteenth-century English poet to win the Prize. He won not only on the basis of his short stories, which more closely mirror the ambiguities of the declining Edwardian world than has commonly been recognized, but also on the basis of his tremendous ability as a popular poet. His reputation was first made with Barrack Room Ballads (1892), and in "Recessional" he captured a side of Queen Victoria's final jubilee that no one else dared to address.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Guardian Review
He sat astride the gun Zam-Zammah, opposite the Lahore Wonder House. Burnished black by the sun, though definitely not a native for he was the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, Kim yonder espied a Tibetan lama. "Whither goest thou, most Holy Asiatic man?" he asked. "I searcheth for the River in which the Arrow of Life has landed," the lama replied. "And what, pray, is thy name, boy?" "They callest me Friend of the World," Kim said, "and I shall be your chela on your quest to escape the Wheel of Things. But first, lettest me say farewell to my erstwhile guardian." "God's curse on all Unbelievers," Mahbub Ali exclaimed, reflecting the colourful diversity of the Indian sub-continent. "Since thou musteth go, then telleth the British commander in Umballah his stallion is pukka." With the natural disguise of the native and the intelligence of the sahib, Kim overheard two brigands talking. There was more to Mahbub Ali's note than met the eye. "Come," he said to the lama. "Letteth us leave on the te-rain before there's trouble afoot." "Thou art a doughty fellow," the Colonel said, glancing at the note. With the natural disguise of the native and the intelligence of the sahib, the Friend of the World realised the Game was on. There was to be fighting in the North! But first, he would remain the lama's chela and seek out the River of the Arrow. "Hit ye not that snake," the lama cried as they walked the Grand Trunk Road. "For within is a fallen man seeking redemption." "Actually," the cobra hissed, "I was a millipede in my last life and I'm on the way up." "How happy we are," the Sikh and the Pathan declared, sharing their victual with Kim and the lama. "We artest truly blessed to enjoy the rich diversity of India." "Indeed we are," the Old Soldier agreed. "The Mutiny is but a long-forgotten aberration. Verily, those that did riseth up against the Sacred Sahibs were grippest by a Fevered Madness. How else can one explaineth so profane an act against the benevolence of the Raj?" With the natural disguise of the native and the intelligence of the sahib, Kim procured some tikkuts for the te-rain and, after many pages on the richness of Indian culture, realised the plot was getting seriously waylaid. "Forsooth," cried Kim, "my parents always toldeth me the Red Bull would beareth me Good News. And thither is a flag of the Red Bull." "Behold," whispered the lama. "It is the ensign of your father's regiment. The prophecies cometh true." "Well, young man," the chaplain declared. "Seeing as thou art a pure Sahib by birth, the regiment will taketh you in and schooleth thee at Lucknow." "God's teeth," the Colonel exclaimed. "With his natural disguise of the native and his intelligence of the sahib, the boy will becometh a top spy in the Great Game once we have taughteth him a feweth lessons. Come playeth the White Man, boy!" "I musteth returneth to my spiritual quest for the River of the Arrow," the lama whispered. "Else I shall be grindeth by the Wheel of Things. Yet letteth my chela visit me from time to time." "Thou art a mischievous imp, O Friend of the World," Mahbub Ali groaned some three years later. "Thy constant scampish cunning and thy boundless romantic idealism of Indian imperialism becometh rather wearing after a whileth. Prithee, forgeteth the fake fakirs and get oneth with the story. Such as it iseth." "Mayest I sayeth a word?" enquired Huneefa, the token woman. "Nay, impenitent heathen," the colonel replied. "Women are a distraction to the affairs of Empire." Kim flung himself upon the next turn of the Wheel, learning the arts of the Game, first with Sahib Lurgan and his Hindu servant, and then with Babu Hurree Chunder Mookherjee. "What the dooce!" cried Babu Mookherjee. "We neeeedeth to find the eveeeedence of an attack in the north." "Taketh no notice of Babu's funny voice," the Colonel laughed. "He talketh stupid to letteth you know that though he iseth a well-educated Indian, he iseth stilleth a native and canneth never be oneth of us." "Do not thou and I also talk quaintly?" Kim enquired. "'Pon my word tis a bitteth late to thinketh of that. Now get thee hence to the North to playeth the Great Game". "Come chela , perhaps the River of the Arrow is to be found in the Karakorum," the lama said. "Yet what manner of Unenlightened strangers shall be found in the mountains?" " Da . Niet . Dosvedanya ." "Good fortune!" Kim said. "We haveth cometh upon the Russians, and yea it iseth the Russians who are the enemy of Blessed India. Keepeth them talking while I nicketh their code books and diaries and thence we shall sneaketh off." "You haveth the eveeeedence, O Friend of the World," Babu smiled. "The Great Game hath beeeeen won." "Methinks I hath been looking for the River of the Arrow in the wrong place," the lama said sadly. "Wilt thou comest with me to find the Meaning of Life further south?" "Perhaps I will. For I am Kim. Or am I?" John Crace's Digested Reads appear in G2 on Tuesdays. Caption: article-DigKim.1 "God's curse on all Unbelievers," Mahbub Ali exclaimed, reflecting the colourful diversity of the Indian sub-continent. "Since thou musteth go, then telleth the British commander in Umballah his stallion is pukka." With the natural disguise of the native and the intelligence of the sahib, [Kim] overheard two brigands talking. There was more to Mahbub Ali's note than met the eye. "Come," he said to the lama. "Letteth us leave on the te-rain before there's trouble afoot." "Taketh no notice of Babu's funny voice," the Colonel laughed. "He talketh stupid to letteth you know that though he iseth a well-educated Indian, he iseth stilleth a native and canneth never be oneth of us." - John Crace.
Excerpts
Excerpts
From Jeffrey Meyers's Introduction to Kim In Kim , Kipling creates an exotic atmosphere, full of vivid characters and incidents, and immediately draws the reader into his strange world. The novel concerns a religious quest and a quest for identity, and includes both enlightenment and espionage, tranquillity and violence. It combines social, cultural, and political history with the hardships and goal of a travel book. Like Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (1922), Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge (l944), and Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea (1978), it is one of the rare European novels with a Buddhist theme. Kim and the lama, Dharma Bums on the Road, foreshadow the sprawling works of Jack Kerouac. Maugham, a great admirer of Kipling, wrote that he gives you "the tang of the East, the smell of the bazaars, the torpor of the rains, the heat of the sun-scorched earth, the rough life of the barracks."10 Kipling achieved his brilliant effects by combining his two great themes, childhood and India, and by creating a bountiful array of characters, subtle modulations of style and speech, and a carefully wrought structure that controls the series of fortuitous encounters and picaresque adventures. Kim, the orphaned son of a drunken Irish sergeant and a nursemaid mother, has been brought up by a Eurasian opium eater, given free run of the narrow streets and back alleys of Lahore, and become completely assimilated to Indian life. The rainbow coalition of indigenous teachers, who lead him to his true identity and real vocation, are increasingly Europeanized; his English teachers, who train him as a spy, are increasingly sophisticated and significant. The Tibetan Buddhist lama rejects the world and searches for salvation. Mahbub Ali, the Afghan Muslim horse trader, works with the English but retains his traditional customs. Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, the Hindu Bengali and "semi-anglicized product of our Indian colleges,"11 tries to adopt British behavior and speech. The Protestant and Catholic clergymen, Mr. Bennett and Father Victor, try to co-opt Kim into their religions. Lurgan, English but born in India, tests Kim and trains him for the Great Game of espionage. Colonel Creighton, a secret agent masquerading as an ethnologist (Kim, an expert on castes and keen on mimicry, is himself an amateur ethnologist), recognizes Kim's unique potential and exploits his rare talents. Kim asks: "'What am I? Mussalman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist?'" and is none of the above. But in a brief, touching scene he combines the British, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jain elements in his character and culture and forgets "even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan fashion, to touch his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple". Kim and each of his native mentors have a different and quite idiosyncratic way of speaking. Kipling vividly conveys the flavor of vernacular speech and the formulaic repetitions of unlettered folk by using traditional proverbs and archaic diction from the seventeenth-century English of the King James Bible and Shakespeare. The lama keeps repeating the same solemn banalities in a singsong cadence: "'They are all bound upon the Wheel. . . . Bound from life after life. To none of these has the Way been shown'". Mahbub Ali's declamatory phrases express his hearty ruffianism: "'God's curse on all unbelievers! Beg from those of my tail who are of thy faith.'" The babu Hurree, pompous and slightly absurd, drops his definite articles, mispronounces long words, and misuses English idioms: "'I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that--that--that you were pulling my legs.'" The seductive Woman of Shamlegh speaks with languid insinuations: "'I do not love Sahibs, but thou wilt make us a charm in return for it. We do not wish little Shamlegh to get a bad name.'" Kim shifts from stilted English before his formal education: "'Every month I become a year more old,'" to old-fashioned schoolboy slang after he's been to St. Xavier's: "'By Jove! . . . This is a dam'-tight place.'" T. S. Eliot observed the contrast between Kipling's portrayal of native characters in the early stories and in Kim : There are two strata in Kipling's appreciation of India, the stratum of the child and that of the young man. It was the latter who observed the British in India and wrote the rather cocky and rather acid tales of Delhi and Simla, but it was the former who loved the country and its people. . . . The Indian characters have the greater reality because they are treated with the understanding of love. . . . It is the four great Indian characters in Kim who are real: the Lama [not Indian], Mahbub Ali, Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, and the wealthy widow from the North. Excerpted from Kim by Rudyard Kipling All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
