How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
'Nay, if it please thee to forget—the one thing only that thou hast not told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I ask with my head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We know He drew the bow! We know the arrow fell! We know the stream gushed! Where, then, is the River? My dream told me to find it. So I came. I am here. But where is the River?'
'If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?'
'By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,' the lama went on, unheeding. 'The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some little stream, maybe—dried in the heats? But the Holy One would never so cheat an old man.' (1.64-6)
The lama is an old man in terms of years, but sometimes his naivety about the world makes him seem kind of like a child. The fact that he more or less demands that the curator of the Lahore Museum tell him where the River of the Arrow is, even though the curator keeps trying to tell him that he just doesn't know, makes the lama appear kind of immature in this scene. Does the lama in some sense grow up over the course of the book, as Kim does?
Quote #2
'It may be that the Bull knows—that he is sent to guide us both.' said the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating Kim: 'This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of this world.'
'Beggars aplenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a yogi nor such a disciple,' said the woman.
Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled. But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him of their best. (2.110-112)
We think that the lama comes across as pretty childish in this book, but the striking thing is that even though many of the people the lama meets on the road in India think he's crazy, naive, or both, they also believe in him enough to feed him and support him on his travels. It's as though being a holy man means that you have to be a bit childish—that innocence seems to be one of the markers of holiness in this book.
Quote #3
'Oho!' said the old soldier. 'Whence hadst thou that song, despiser of this world?'
'I learned it in Pathankot—sitting on a doorstep,' said the lama shyly. 'It is good to be kind to babes.'
'As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light, stumbling-blocks upon the Way. Do children drop from Heaven in thy country? Is it the Way to sing them songs?'
'No man is all perfect,' said the lama gravely, recoiling the rosary. 'Run now to thy mother, little one.' (3.168-171)
The lama teaches that marriage and children are obstacles to finding true meaning in this life, since some schools of Buddhism hold that emotional attachment will keep you tied to the Great Wheel of Things. But then, when he is sitting in a field with Kim and the Old Man Who Fought in '57, a baby boy comes toddling over. The lama sings to him and seems to enjoy playing with the child, and the Old Man Who Fought in '57 mocks the lama for his hypocrisy, since the lama preaches against having children when he so clearly likes them.
This scene shows in miniature the lama's main conflict over the whole course of the novel: he loves Kim as a grandson, even though he thinks that love and family keep you from gaining Enlightenment. For more on how the lama resolves this issue for himself, check out our section on "What's Up With the Ending?"
Quote #4
On the morning of the fourth day a judgement overtook that drummer. They had gone out together towards Umballa racecourse. He returned alone, weeping, with news that young O'Hara, to whom he had been doing nothing in particular, had hailed a scarlet-bearded n***** on horseback; that the n***** had then and there laid into him with a peculiarly adhesive quirt, picked up young O'Hara, and borne him off at full gallop. (6.86)
We know the English drummer-boy has been bullying Kim badly since Kim first started living in the Mavericks' regimental housing, so when the drummer-boy returns to the regiment barracks weeping after Mahbub Ali hits him with a riding whip (the "quirt") and carries off Kim to meet Creighton officially for the first time, we are not particularly sympathetic to his pain.
Quote #5
'That is all one.' The great red beard wagged solemnly. 'Children should not see a carpet on the loom till the pattern is made plain. Believe me, Friend of all the World, I do thee great service. They will not make a soldier of thee.'
'You crafty old sinner!' thought Creighton. 'But you're not far wrong. That boy mustn't be wasted if he is as advertised.' (6.124-5)
Mahbub Ali says to Kim that he doesn't intend to tell Kim his plans because "children should not see a carpet on the loom till the pattern is made plain." In other words, adults are the ones who make plans—it is the kid's job to accept those plans, whether they like it or not. Eventually, Kim thanks Mahbub Ali for the decision to keep him in school and make him a Sahib, but we find it a little hard that both Mahbub Ali and Creighton look at Kim—this kid who has just turned fourteen—as though he is raw material for their own ideas.
When Creighton says Kim "mustn't be wasted" if he has as much talent as Mahbub Ali says he has, he is talking about Kim as though he has no more feelings about or wishes for his future than any other natural resource. Kim may as well be a block of wood, for all that Creighton cares about his personal ambitions. It's lucky for Creighton that Kim actually wants to join the Great Game, because otherwise, the two of them might have had to fight over Kim's future.
Quote #6
'I am very old,' he thought sleepily. 'Every month I become a year more old. I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub's message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white Regiment I was very young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses' pedigrees, or maybe I shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him. Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes back to Benares.' (8.66)
The very fact that Kim thinks of a year as something long shows how young he is. In our experience, as we've gotten older, the more years you spend on this earth, the shorter those years seem (just ask your grandma). Anyway, we like this passage because it shows the ways in which Kim is starting to reflect on his own life up until this point. Kim has also started thinking of the future, which didn't seem to be a huge concern for him in Chapter 1.
Kim may still have about seven chapters of growing up to do after this point, but he is considering who he is and what he wants—both definite signs that Kim is developing into a young adult.
Quote #7
'Was that Lurgan Sahib?' Kim asked as he cuddled down. No answer. He could hear the Hindu boy breathing, however, and, guided by the sound, crawled across the floor, and cuffed into the darkness, crying: 'Give answer, devil! Is this the way to lie to a Sahib?'
From the darkness he fancied he could hear the echo of a chuckle. It could not be his soft-fleshed companion, because he was weeping. So Kim lifted up his voice and called aloud: 'Lurgan Sahib! O Lurgan Sahib! Is it an order that thy servant does not speak to me?'
'It is an order.' The voice came from behind him and he started. (9.19-21)
At the beginning of this trip to Lurgan's house, Kim decides that he "would be a Sahib again for a while" (9.1). In other words, he is going to inhabit what he sees as the role of the white man. And as part of that role, he is quite rough on this Hindu boy.
It is kind of weird to see Kim—who we know was beaten up by the other kids at his awful regimental school—suddenly hitting someone else for acting under Lurgan's orders. Why do you think Kim is being so rough and tough here? Do Kim's Sahib manners continue in later scenes of the book? What does Kim's behavior in this chapter suggest to you about what it means to be a Sahib?
Quote #8
'The pony is made—finished—mouthed and paced, Sahib! From now on, day by day, he will lose his manners if he is kept at tricks. Drop the rein on his back and let go,' said the horse-dealer. 'We need him.'
'But he is so young, Mahbub—not more than sixteen—is he?'
'When I was fifteen, I had shot my man and begot my man, Sahib.'
'You impenitent old heathen!' Creighton turned to Lurgan. The black beard nodded assent to the wisdom of the Afghan's dyed scarlet.
'I should have used him long ago,' said Lurgan. 'The younger the better. That is why I always have my really valuable jewels watched by a child. You sent him to me to try. I tried him in every way: he is the only boy I could not make to see things.' (10.25-9)
Creighton worries that he is sending Kim out into the world too young, but both Mahbub Ali and Lurgan insist that Kim has to start his work as a spy young or else he will lose that flexibility that makes him such a particularly good spy. Speaking symbolically, when a person is young, they have a lot of potential to become anything, but then at a certain age, they will settle down into one thing that they are meant to be. Mahbub Ali and Lurgan do not want Kim to settle into one thing—they want to take advantage of his potential to keep shifting.
What do you think of their decision to send Kim into his highly dangerous workplace at seventeen? Is it fair to employ someone on the assumption that they will never settle down? (By the way, Mahbub Ali's comment that he "begot" his man at fifteen means that he had a son at fifteen—"begot" is an old-fashioned word for making someone pregnant.)
Quote #9
Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the warm darkness of an upper chamber, in the ward that is behind Azim Ullah's tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Birdcage—it is so full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings.
The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist, arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery. When she turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. (10.77-8)
When Kim first arrives at the Birdcage and sees Huneefa lying there in her gauzy clothes, it seems like Mahbub Ali plans to introduce Kim to his sexual coming-of-age—Mahbub Ali has brought Kim to a secret place filled with tobacco and the sounds of women's voices, and it definitely appears to be a brothel. But what Mahbub Ali is actually paying Huneefa to do is to cast charms on Kim for good luck. There is a lot of sexuality in the background and between the lines of this novel, but nothing ever really happens in the main plot line of Kim.
Quote #10
Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take joy in the day's march—such joy as a boy of St Xavier's who had won the quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends. The hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off his bones; the dry air, taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper ribs; and the tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and thigh. (13.10)
Kim's journey through the Himalayas with the lama does not only "de-Englishise" (10.132) him (a term the Babu uses to mean that Kim has to lose some of the discipline that St. Xavier's has taught him), but also physically makes a man of him. All of this climbing is like boot camp: suddenly, as Kim is getting ready for regular field work as a Secret Service agent, he is also putting on new muscle and generally getting stronger.
Kipling makes the process of learning to become a spy sound incredibly attractive, since it turns you into this sure-footed, muscular, handsome, Kim-like guy. This novel sometimes reads like a recruitment pitch for the Secret Service, frankly.