Kim

Summary

Kim is Rudyard Kipling's novel of British India in the 1880s, a story of adventure and espionage that is also a portrait of the country's peoples, roads and religions. Kimball O'Hara is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, raised in poverty in Lahore and so at home in the streets that he passes for a local boy. Known as the "Little Friend of all the World", he runs errands for anyone, including the Afghan horse-trader Mahbub Ali, who secretly gathers intelligence for the British. At the Lahore Museum Kim meets a Tibetan lama, Teshoo Lama, who is searching for the River of the Arrow, which he believes will free him from the Wheel of Things. Kim becomes his chela, or disciple, and the two set out along the Grand Trunk Road. Kim also carries a message from Mahbub Ali to a British officer, and so begins his part in the Great Game, the rivalry between Britain and Russia for influence in Central Asia. When Kim stumbles on his father's old regiment, the soldiers discover that he is white and send him to school. The lama, who has come to love him, pays for his education at St. Xavier's in Lucknow. During his holidays Kim is trained in observation and disguise by Colonel Creighton's agents: Mahbub Ali, the mysterious jeweler Lurgan Sahib and the Bengali agent Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, known as the Babu. At sixteen he rejoins the lama on the road, now also on a secret mission. In the Himalayas the two encounter a Russian and a French agent who are mapping the passes. When one of them strikes the lama, Kim fights them, and with the help of the hill people he takes their papers. Exhausted, Kim and the lama descend to the plains and are nursed by a wealthy widow. Kim recovers and wonders who he is; the lama announces that he has found his River and achieved enlightenment, which he has turned back from in order to bring Kim with him. Kim is Kipling's most admired novel and was written in the years before he received the Nobel Prize in 1907. Readers value its vivid picture of Indian life and the tender friendship between the boy and the lama. Postcolonial critics, notably Edward Said, have also examined how it assumes and celebrates British rule. The novel is widely studied both as a classic adventure story and as a document of empire.

Top Lessons

• Who is Kim?

  Kim belongs to many worlds, Irish, Indian, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist, and keeps asking who he is. The novel invites reflection on identity formed by place and relationship as much as birth.

• Two paths: the Game and the Way

  Kim serves both the lama's spiritual quest and the British secret service. Kipling sets action against contemplation without forcing a final choice between them.

• Reading empire

  The novel presents British rule as natural and benevolent. Reading it alongside critics allows students to enjoy its art while analyzing its assumptions.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Lurgan Sahib's attempt to make Kim see a broken jar made whole is an early literary depiction of suggestion or hypnosis, which Kim resists by reciting the multiplication table.

• Chapter IX

  Lurgan Sahib's test of Kim with the jar.