Kim

One of Kim’s most noticeable literary features is that it operates almost as a panoramic landscape of India. To Kipling’s European and American audiences, who might have been tempted to view India as a single cultural entity, Kim delivers a startling contrast: an expansive vision of the vast diversity of cultures, languages, religions, and ethnicities that make up the Indian subcontinent. The first chapters introduce the readers to Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, and Christian characters. In one of the earliest scenes, Kipling’s description of the lama’s entry into the Wonder House (the cultural museum in Lahore) introduces Buddhist terms by way of Christian imagery and references to Hindu characters: “Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while the mother and father listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin Devadatta” (10).

This religious and cultural diversity also plays into Kim’s questions about personal identity. With so many options before him, he does not know where he fits. Upon his departure for the school at Lucknow, he at first appears to resolve to become a Christian since that is what white Europeans were: “I am to pray to Bibi Miriam [i.e., the Virgin Mary], and I am a Sahib.” However, he immediately backtracks, saying, “No; I am Kim. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?” (101). Later in the novel, Mahbub Ali is counseling Kim to remember his dual identities in their proper place: when with Europeans, to remember that he is a sahib, but when he is out and about in India—here Ali catches himself, unable to complete the sentence because no one knew what the Indian side of Kim was. Kim asks, “What am I? Mussalman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist? That is a hard knot.” (121). Kim’s primary skill as a spy—his ability to make and inhabit the costumes of all India’s various cultures and religions—plays into this theme. He has mastery over all their outward appearances, but he is something of a chimera, not belonging to any of them.

India’s religious and cultural diversity facilitates the story’s turning point at its climax. The disjunction between the European foreigners’ lack of religious understanding and cultural sensitivity on the one hand and the servants’ folk Buddhism on the other erupts in violent action when the lama is struck. The detailed cultural, ethnographic, and religious information adds a richly textured feel to the story throughout the story. Kim emerges as a novel that is intoxicating in the sheer volume of its cultural descriptors, to the point where the cultural richness of the novel becomes as much a defining feature of the book as the plot itself.

The religious aspects of the novel also tie into the subjectivity that lies at the heart of personal identity, particularly in the opening and closing scenes of the novel. The beginning and end of the book center upon experiences for which two different perspectives are offered: a rational, agnostic perspective and a mystical, quasi-religious perspective. At the beginning of the book, the prophecy of the Red Bull from Kim’s father is presented. The narration clarifies that it is possible to understand this prophecy as simply the muddled, poorly remembered sayings of a dying opium addict. However, the novel leaves open the possibility that it is indeed a prophecy, which is mystically fulfilled in the events that Kim experiences in Chapters 1-5. Similarly, at the end of the book, the scene of the lama’s enlightenment is presented from two perspectives: that of the Babu, who interpreted it as the lama falling into a brook; and that of the lama, who saw it as the discovery of the enlightening waters of the Arrow River. In each case, both perspectives stand side by side so that the reader can judge between them, their duality underscoring the inherent subjectivity of religious experiences.