Kim

Rating:
Summary: Still worth reading
Review: This is a very entertaining novel, though not as good as the best of Kipling's short stories. As an adventure-oriented bildungsroman, Kim is well constructed with its gradual exposure of the ethnic and religous diversity of India, its engaging characters, and good quality of writing. While written as an adventure novel, Kim is also Kipling's prediction of the British Raj would become. The hero, Kim O'Hara, is in many ways an idealization of what saw as the logical conclusion of British India; a hybrid composed of both Indian and British elements. In an ironic way, this is how things turned out in British India. But where Kim is ethnically British with a largely Indian cultural background, the real inheritors of the British Raj were ethnic Indians (of a variety of ethnicities, castes, and faiths) whose outlook is colored strongly by Western influences.

How this book is read in a 'post-colonial' era is an interesting question. It would be easy, and wrong, to dismiss this book merely as an Imperialist tract, though Kipling clearly supported British Imperial control. It is even wronger to attack Kipling's racism, though there are unquestionably stereotyped elements present. In many ways, Kim is a celebration of India's ethnic and religous diversity. Probably the most unsympathetic characters in the book are not Indian, but Britishers with provincial outlooks. Kipling's support of the Empire is rather more subtle. It is clear that he viewed the existence of the huge and relatively tolerant polyglot society that was the Raj as the result of relatively benign British rule and protection. This is probably true. Without British overlordship, India is likely to have been a congeries of competing states riven by ethnic and religous divisions. Where Kipling is profoundly misleading is what he leaves out, particularly the economic exploitation India and crucial role India played in the Imperial economy.

Rating:
Summary: ignore agendas, resist the New System
Review: I wonder if Kipling's most vitriolic critics have read anything about him (or by him) besides caustic post-colonial dissertations. Surely they can't pretend that they've read KIM with silly labels such as "imperialistic," "ignorant," "globalizing," and "racist." I advise these misguided flowers to read without agendas.

But of course reading without agendas nowadays would so offend our academies that it's absolutely impossible. KIM *is* a simple story, as one reviewer already mentioned, that does not really deal with colonial "assumptions" whatsoever. In fact, I marvel at how people ignore the basic fact that Kim resisted his Sahib identity when we could only sympathize with him. Kim contrasts well with THE JUNGLE BOOK'S Mowgli because he disdains most social groups, preferring above all his lama and "the road." If anything, his "yearning" toward colonization near the book's end (itself dubiously proven) probably reflects his educational indoctrination, if anything else. Kipling surely wasn't a stupid writer, and it's probably no coincidence that Kim turns to colonialism only after the Sahibs educate and recruit him in "the Great Game." Whether that's good or bad is irrelevant; Kipling does not justify, advocate or endorse colonialism in KIM. Nor does he waste space needlessly attacking it. Why do people need fiction to contain ideology? Why can't people understand that some stories are about characters and that authors imposing their voices is sometimes unnecessary? "Adult" perspectives in the novel, which critics charge could never come from Kim, come from adult characters. Duh. Kipling, unlike his postmodern butchers, did not write with an agenda.

Unfortunately for his reputation, Kipling professed elsewhere that he favored colonialism and the White Man's Burden. Readers, even more unfortunately, approach his books with such prejudices, prepared to pounce on his literature at the slightest provocation and blame him for not explicitly condemning British imperialism. I'm sorry that people hold such depressing views of how fiction should be written.

A note on the Penguin edition: I found its CONSTANT "scholastic" footnotes irritating and insulting. I can read a book without being told what Buddhism is, thanks. Then again, all those numbers detract from the story itself and advocate the editor's agenda that this book isn't to be enjoyed at all, but only to be jeered at in a postmodern armpit.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Game
Review: Kim is a young boy, a naughty rascal from the streets of Lahore, very much in the tradition of Huck Finn or Lázaro de Tormes, heroes of the picaresque. He is the child of a dead Irish soldier and a native woman who is addicted to opium, so he is pretty much on his own, wandering around all day and being called "the friend of all the world". He has been told that he is destined for great things, and that he will meet his fate when he sees "a red bull on a green field". One day, a mysterious holy man arrives in Lahore and Kim leaves with him. He travels around India with this holy lama, experiencing many adventures in this vast, colorful and dangerous land. Of course he meets his destiny and soon he is playing "the Great Game", that is, he becomes a spy for the English crown in its war to retain control over India and Afghanistan (yep, trouble goes that far back and more).
This is simply a delightful book about an extraordinary hero and his even more extraordinary mentor, the wise lama. If you are attracted by India, this will be a real treat, since it allows you to experience the magic, color, tastes and smells of this interesting nation, in the midst of exciting adventure and spy-games. Kipling was a very good writer who had the trick of writing intelligent books disguised as children iterature. Don't let him cheat you: this is a great novel about a bygone age.

Rating:
Summary: Still an important novel on the India of the colonial period
Review: The vast majority of us no longer have much sympathy with ideas legitimizing the "white man's burden" and the necessity for Europeans and Americans to govern and control vast countries and continents around the globe. Most of us no longer share Kipling's views about the essential correctness of British occupation and rule of India. And we certainly do not share the almost unbelievably naive biases he expresses about "the Oriental mind" and the nature of typical native of India. As a result, I found it very hard to find much to like or admire in Kim, a Sahib who is good at pretending to be a native. For him, it all seems like a game within the context of The Great Game. At the end of the novel, he sets aside his native costume, and takes him proper place in the world of the rulers, instead of living with and as an Indian.

In a sense, KIM is almost impossible for an educated person to read today as literature. It seems instead to be more historical artifact. We simply are not able to go back and time and read it with the same imperial eyes of just over a century ago. I found it exceedingly difficult to read any passage dealing with Kim and his adventures with any degree of sympathy and I found it impossible to identify with him. Whatever enjoyment I found in the book I discovered in the character of the old lama. Nonetheless, while it is hard today to read this novel as literature, it makes for fascinating reading as a documentary of colonial assumptions and beliefs. In other words, it makes great history.

I would very strongly recommend anyone wanting to read this novel to do so in the Penguin Classics edition. The introduction by Edward Said, author of ORIENTALISM, is almost worth the price of the entire book. He does a masterful job in a remarkably brief space of limning the key issues in a post-colonial reading of colonial literature, and applies this brilliantly to the major issues that arise in a reading of KIM.

Rating:
Summary: Great insight into India
Review: This book delves deep into India's caste system and culture at the turn of the century. Our main charachter, Kim, is on a mission to deliver a letter, and from there meets many varied an interresting people. One of these is a monk, who 'adopts' Kim as a student. The monk is in search of enlightenment, and belives Kim to be the answer in his finding a special river.

In this book you will be transported to India in a romanticised time of great poverty, and occupation by the Brittish empire. This is a story of coming-of-age during hardship and turmoil.

Rating:
Summary: An 'on the road' beautiful story
Review: I adore this book, read many times. Kipling is a master teller of tales and this powerfully descriptive story holds my rapt attention throughout. The characters are vivid and live in my imagination. Kipling has a great command of language, and conveys the beauty of the great language of poetry, Urdu. The humanity, gentle humour and joyful exuberance of the characters balances the emotionally moving relationship and quest of the two seekers, Kim and the Teshoo Lama. There is so much to this tale that no review can do it justice, equally no film could be made that could capture this magic richness of storytelling. (I always become hungry reading this story - the descriptions of the local fare are mouthwatering and delectible!). Perhaps, if you have enjoyed reading Song of the Open Road from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, you will enjoy to read this.

Rating:
Summary: Fine adventure bok, but not what I expected
Review: Although I have read tons of literature, I have never read Kipling, but of course have heard of him. This book was a fine adventure tale, but I suppose I was expecting something a little bit more profound and insightful. The novel has a fun plot and plenty of interesting characters, but seems void of any real conflict. Even if I got a biased view, I was looking for some insight into the politics and culture of colonial India at the turn of the century. The events and dialogue in this book all seem to touch things on the surface and at the end of day it didn't make me THINK about things like a good book does. This would be a fun book to read along with your precocious 12 year old, but I wouldn't recommend it to an adult looking for good literature. If your interested in great literary fiction dealing with India, read "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry..much better.

Rating:
Summary: "Kim" (digital version) flawed
Review: I love the novel. I am sixty-three years old and have read it many times. I downloaded the digital version in order to read it in large type. I have been so disappointed to see all the OCR (optical character reader) errors. This book is such a classic that it deserves to be "cleaned up" before presenting it to the public.

This is a five star novel with a one star *digital* presentation.

Rating:
Summary: Vast in its simplicity
Review: In all its complexity, this really is a simple book: it is simply an exuberant vision of India.

I wanted a book that would give me an English Colonialist view of India. It is a rather hard thing to find: few English Victorian writers of any consequence wrote about India. It wasn't until later, ie, Orwell and Forster, that it became a popular topic, and they wrote with a vastly different attitude. I just wanted to know what an Englishman thought of the "jewel in the English colonial crown".

What I found is exactly what I wanted: so exactly that it caught me off guard. Kipling offers no politics, neither "problems of England in India" or "The White Man's Burden". Kim is, quite simply, a vision of India. Exuberant, complex, vibrant, full of energy and life and change. This is Kipling's India. It is a beautiful, mysterious, dangerous, amazing place.

There is a hint of mass market fiction here -- the basic structure being a young boy, a prodigy, uniquely equipped to help the adults in important "adult" matters -- reminds me of Ender's Game or Dune (both books I loved, but not exactly "literature". But perhaps this isn't either. Such was the claim of critic after critic. But anyway.) Yet in reality it is only a device -- an excuse for Kipling to take his boy on adventures and to immerse us more fully in the pugnant waters of Indian culture -- or cultures.

As far as the English/Colonialism question goes, perhaps the real reason Kipling drew so much flak is because he deals his English critics the most cruel insult -- worse than calling them evil, or stupid, or wrong, he implies that they just don't matter that much. Kipling's India is a diverse place, with a plethora of people groups in it, divided by caste, religion, ethnicity, whatever. And the English, the "Sahibs"? Another people group. That's all. They don't dominate or corrupt or really change anything in any profound way; they just sort of become part of the broiling swirl of cultures and peoples that is India.
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Rating:
Summary: Seeking a Red Bull and the River of the Arrrow
Review: "Who is Kim?" is the rhetorical question posed several times in this novel of India under the Raj (Queen Victoria, latter 19th Century). Born of British parents but raised as an orphan by natives, this unique boy is a Eurasian sprite, a gamin not only of the streets but also the plains and ulitmately, the hills.
Comfortable in various dialects and delighting in disguses and
urban pranks, Kim little realizes that Fate is grooming him for the Great Game (secret service to Great Britian). Indeed Kipling frequently uses the horse metaphor, with the boy as "the colt." Ignorant of his true heritage and birthright, this merry and resouceful hustler attaches himself to an aged holy man--a seeker of the Way. As the tale progresses, there develops a
curious but deep bond between the Tibetan Red Hat and his quick-
witted CHELA (servant.)

This unlikely duo sets out across the Hind, each following his own, private Quest: for Kim it's a red bull on a green field which will make his fortune; for the Lama it's a special river which will grant him ultimate peace.
Mutually dependent for philosopical wisdom and street smarts, for phsyical sustenance and moral enlightenment, the pair encounters many stangers and surprising allies on their journey, discreetly underscored by Her Majesty's desire to learn the disposition of certain Rajahs and devious foreigners. No one can be trusted in this land of passion and self-gratification, but there is a legitimate need for an accurate Survey of the subcontinent.

Rudyard Kipling's background and jounalistic experiences in India--"the Jewel in the Crown"--provide vivid inspiration and exhaustive detail for this tapestry of a multi-cultured nation in political bondage. He endows his young protagonist (aged 12-16) with many endearing qualities, but never permits him to forget that he was a Sahib--with a duty to the Great Game of international and internal espionage. Kim forms several unique friendships as he tramps the Grand Trunk, the dusty plains even into the high Hills. To be sure he acquires a formal, Sahib's education, but it is on the road as a willing wayfarer that he accumulates diverse skills in native arts. For young Mister O'Hara is being trained--not as a soldier--but as a chain man for the prestigious Ethnological Survey. Kipling blends narration with clever dialgoue, action with introspective reflection, as old man and boy seek their individual paths in life. Kim represents the best of both (or multiple) worlds--enthusiastically dedicated to her Majesty's illustrious service. A children's classic to be enjoyed by all ages.