"Roads Were Meant to be Walked Upon"

[A Saturday Feature of the First Road Blog]

Having enjoyed Kipling’s Captain’s Courageous in days past, I decided to tackle his more complex work, KIM – first published in 1900-1901. My purpose in this review is not to encourage one to read the book but to be aware of its character. For my part, I couldn’t help comparing it with George MacDonald’s Sir Gibbie (The Baronet’s Song).

Gibbie, a British waif, is simply good. His story is a maturing goodness navigating through the best and worst of English society. Kim is an Anglo/Hindu orphan who uses good to his advantage while practicing the finer points of lying, stealing, and other talents of an urchin in dark and conspiratorial nineteenth century India. Gibbie is Christian. Kim is not. Gibbie walks on the light side, confronting the struggles of life. Kim walks on the dark side, immersed in the struggles of intrigue. Both are achievers; but, in the end, Gibbie faces great opportunities while Kim faces uncertainties.

With the exception of two priests who help channel him into the educational advantages of the British Empire, Kim’s adventures are linked to British agents and a handful of native moles helping the Empire in The Great Game. The one consistent figure in Kim’s career as a spy-in-training is a Tibetan Lama, and therein lays the heart of the tale.

The Lama, espouses a philosophy of the illusion of matter and rejects desire as a source of evil. Yet he, himself, struggles with desire for the River of Life, finds the desire intensified by Kim’s unanticipated friendship, and makes compromises with illusion.  

I suppose the book is a good presentation, in story form, of the contorted lines of oriental worldviews. In particular, Kipling weaves the struggles of the boy and the Lama into a poignant conclusion where the priest seems on the brink of drowning (literally) in an illusion he thinks to be reality. Kim, on the other hand has come to recognize, “Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less.”

Pity no one was there to the speak of the One who could speak to both reality and reality behind reality.

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