How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
'Off! Off! Let me up!' cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammah's wheel.
'Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi,' sang Kim. 'All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!'
'Let me up!' shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India is the only democratic land in the world. (1.7-9)
As we discuss in our "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" section, the fact that Kim is sitting on top of this historic cannon symbolizes British domination over India in Kipling's time. When Kim mocks Abdullah, he mentions that Abdullah is a "Mussalman," an old-fashioned, offensive term for Muslim. And Chota Lal is a wealthy Hindu boy.
This boyish competition between British Kim, Muslim Abdullah, and Hindu Chota Lal over who gets to sit on the cannon presents a miniature version of real-life ethnic and racial tensions dividing British India. By showing us this "democratic" squabble between three boys of totally different economic and social backgrounds, Kipling immediately introduces his vision of India as a place with lots of conflict that nonetheless brings together truly diverse groups of people onto a level playing field.
Quote #2
[The priest] knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again in the dust mysterious signs—to the wonder of all save the lama, who, with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.
At the end of half an hour, he tossed the twig from him with a grunt.
'Hm! Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to make all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign over against him is the sign of War and armed men.' (2.173-5)
In the village where Kim and the lama first meet the Old Man Who Fought in '57, a priest tells Kim his horoscope. And even though the priest's foretelling is really dramatic (half an hour of drawing on the ground with a stick? What could possibly take that long?), the priest turns out to be absolutely right—Kim does spot the two advance-scouts for the Irish Mavericks regiment within three days of meeting this guy. And the sign of the Bull — in other words, the regimental flag of his father's old company — has to be a sign of War, since it's an army banner.
Even though this whole sequence with the priest comes across as a far-fetched, exotic spectacle, Kipling still portrays the priest as correct in his predictions, and therefore, as someone to be respected, no matter how unlikely he may appear to the reader.
Quote #3
'Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters—all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.'
And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles—such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. They looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed police-station opposite. (3.177-8)
Scenes like these make us feel like Kipling is portraying British India as a specifically foreign country to the reader. By presenting India as "a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world," Kipling portrays India as anything but everyday. Instead, India comes across as this really amazing spectacle—admirable, but distant and unfamiliar.
Quote #4
Dignified and unsuspicious, [the lama] strode into the little tent, saluted the Churches as a Churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier. The yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face red-gold.
Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of 'heathen'. (5.103-4)
Since we spend a good portion of the novel getting to know the lama—and his decency, virtue, and deep faith—Bennett's quick racism strikes us as especially awful. Kipling emphasizes freedom of religion in Kim: here, he is clearly critical of Bennett's prejudices against the lama's beliefs, while he seems to admire the lama's graciousness in greeting these two men as fellow priests, even though they do not share the same belief systems.
Quote #5
'Gorah-log [white-folk]. No-ah! No-ah!' Kim shook his head violently. There was nothing in his composition to which drill and routine appealed. 'I will not be a soldier.'
'You will be what you're told to be,' said Bennett; 'and you should be grateful that we're going to help you.'
Kim smiled compassionately. If these men lay under the delusion that he would do anything that he did not fancy, so much the better.
Another long silence followed. Bennett fidgeted with impatience, and suggested calling a sentry to evict the fakir. (5.164-7)
Again Bennett comes across as a narrow-minded and unimaginative so-and-so; by contrast, Kim seems to be completely outside the expectations of duty and responsibility that Bennett tries to use to keep Kim in line. So Kim immediately refuses to be a soldier and reflects on the fact that he will never do what he does not want to do, no matter what the chaplains of the Irish Mavericks regiment might say.
Kim's freedom not to do "anything that he [does] not fancy" makes him an "Other" to all of the characters (and potential readers) who do have to do what we're told now and again. Kim may not be a foreigner to British India—in fact, he knows it well—but he is outside of a lot of the conventions that the other characters still obey. This outsider status gives Kim an air of exotic romance that makes him an interesting character to read about.
Quote #6
'A most amazin' young bird,' said the sergeant. 'He turns up in charge of a yellow-headed buck-Brahmin priest, with his father's Lodge certificates round his neck, talkin' God knows what all of a red bull. The buck-Brahmin evaporates without explanations, an' the bhoy sets cross-legged on the Chaplain's bed prophesyin' bloody war to the men at large. Injia's a wild land for a God-fearin' man. I'll just tie his leg to the tent-pole in case he'll go through the roof. What did ye say about the war?' (5.192)
We tend to think about foreignness in terms of different cultures or national backgrounds, but here this sergeant presents another way to think about foreignness: in terms of social class. After all, Kipling spells out this guy's accent the way he does the Babu's or Father Victor's, as though it is distinctive and worth noting because it is not average or everyday.
The sergeant doesn't talk like anyone else in the book; he uses lots of abbreviations and slang, in a manner totally different from Creighton, Lurgan, or the other Sahib characters of the novel. How does the sergeant's way of talking influence what you think of the content of his speech? Why do you think Kipling throws in this British working-class character as part of his portrayal of the Irish Mavericks regiment?
Quote #7
'I am sorry you cannot beat my boy this morning. He says he will kill you with a knife or poison. He is jealous, so I have put him in the corner and I shall not speak to him today. He has just tried to kill me. You must help me with the breakfast. He is almost too jealous to trust, just now.'
Now a genuine imported Sahib from England would have made a great to-do over this tale. Lurgan Sahib stated it as simply as Mahbub Ali was used to record his little affairs in the North. (9.33-4)
One of the things that makes Kim and Lurgan unusual in this novel is the relaxed attitude they maintain toward all of the weird stuff that happens to them. Here, Lurgan reports that his adopted Hindu boy might try to poison Kim and/or Lurgan out of jealousy, so they should be on guard. But Lurgan gives Kim this information "simply," without the "great to-do over this tale" that a white person from England might have used. What do you think Kipling is trying to suggest about the cultural attitudes of British people raised in India as opposed to those raised in England? How is their behavior foreign compared to the behavior of "a genuine imported Sahib from England?"
Quote #8
After a huge meal at Kalka, [the Babu] spoke uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to school? Then he, an M A of Calcutta University, would explain the advantages of education. There were marks to be gained by due attention to Latin and Wordsworth's Excursion (all this was Greek to Kim). French, too was vital, and the best was to be picked up in Chandernagore a few miles from Calcutta. Also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by strict attention to plays called Lear and Julius Caesar, both much in demand by examiners. Lear was not so full of historical allusions as Julius Caesar; the book cost four annas, but could be bought second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. Still more important than Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and Hare, was the art and science of mensuration. A boy who had passed his examination in these branches—for which, by the way, there were no cram-books—could, by merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and a straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. But as it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains a boy would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder called adventitious aids' he might still tread his distances. (9.135)
A lot of what the Babu says here about education clearly indicates that he is missing the point of his English studies—the Babu is struggling to absorb information that is culturally foreign to him, and Kim mercilessly makes fun of him for his difficulties. We get into this topic more in our "Character Analysis" of the Babu.
We do want to point out that the Babu isn't actually all wrong here. He is correct about the importance of the science of "mensuration" to Kim, which is the geometry of measuring out space. And since part of Kim's special spy training involves learning to draw maps and measure distances, this kind of study is, in fact, very important for his future. The Babu may not be too familiar with his Shakespeare, but it doesn't matter so much since he knows what's really important for his profession: how to make the maps that "might be sold for large sums in coined silver."