Rudyard Kipling's Kim Analysis

At the same time Mahbub Ali, an old Lahore acquaintance, brings Kim's background and talents to the attention of Colonel Creighton of the Ethnological Survey which also covers intelligence gathering operations throughout the sub-continent, referred to as the Great Game .

After three long years, the kid learns to read and write, in English, grows to enjoy learning, but never forgetting the monk. Given six months, to go with his friend, and resume their impossible, strange, quest. The lama visits numerous, Buddhist shrines, waiting for Kim, many unlikely incidents happen, on the road, even arriving near, the mighty Himalayas. Greatly helped by a rich, cantankerous, kindly woman, the Sahiba, as they go and see this unique land, spies are everywhere here, unknown dangers, but the real story of this book, is India as Kim asks; who

I am Kim. And what is Kim? His soul repeated it again and again . . . tears trickled down his nose and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without". (Rudyard Kipling's Kim. p.331).

That question can be answered very easily, it is the diversity of India's ethnic groups and characters. Kim is now a sociable man, who loves India. Rudyard Kipling breathes the air of India for his formative years. He is an Englishman, who never doubts the superiority of the British way of life, or of the British person. And yet, Kim is infused with the opposite, the native's good-humored willingness to go along with the Sahib because after all, the poor white man needs to think himself superior.

Thus, Kipling's characters are both caricature and fully realized individuals, his Babu is every upstart Bengali who comes up against the Raj and fails, although not quite utterly and his Babu is a man with enough stout self-regard to play the role of an upstart, because that role is a most useful disguise when dealing with men of the West, who see the world in two