(Picture from
here.)
This isn't quite in the same vein as the other posts. For one reason, it's not SF or fantasy. For another, I've been re-reading
Kim every couple of years since the seventies.
But I was looking over a paperback version I gave Ben and read, for the first time, the introduction. In it the "professor" said that it was ironic that Kim was termed "Little Friend of All the World" when there was no evidence he had any friends at all. One wonders what book the "professor" was writing since it bears little resemblance to
Kipling's book. I am forced to presume there exists a book, Kim, by an author, Rudyard Kipling, that, by a wild coincidence bears the same name of book and author as the work with which I am familiar.
Thus, this entry was born.
Kim is the story of Kimball O'Hara, a poor white boy in India. It bears a similarity to
Huckleberry Finn in that both are poor white boys that make their way in the world. They are vastly different in that HF deals with a set of very similar cultures and Kim deals with the vast and diverse of 19th century India. I will not deal here with criticism of Kim as essentially oppressor work about an oppressed country. Similar criticism can be aimed at HF.
Both works deal with an individual coming to a moral sensibility through a path frowned upon by the culture they belong to. However, Huck is born into a world where right and wrong are clearly (if incorrectly) defined. He knows what is right because that's what he's been taught. Huck chooses a different moral path from the one he has been taught, valuing his friendship with the slave, Jim, over any possible damnation from the "moral" world.
Kim has a journey through a different section of the same country. The book
starts with Kim having almost no morality whatsoever. Any higher purpose he might serve is washed away in the excitement of his life, poor and destitute though it might be. It is by way of the friendships he makes and keeps that he brings himself to any sort of moral understanding.
In Kim's case, the overbearing morality of the white sahib culture is insufferable. He seeks over and over again to escape it to the freedom of his poverty-- which to him is not any sort of poverty at all. He befriends and is befriended by a lama from Tibet. One of the struggles through the book is Kim's love for the old man and the old man's resistance to that love, since emotional attachments is against his sect of buddhism. Finally, almost in desperation, the old man finds a parable that seems to give him leave to love this boy to whom his heart is drawn.
Oh, there's a bunch of adventure, spying, etc., in the book, too. It's a lot of fun.
So I got to thinking. I've read a fair amount of 18th and 19th century literature. I've worked my way through Dickens, Austen, Eliot, etc. But I find them pretty tame stuff. Not terribly interesting. Clearly, they are works of quality but they are not works to which I'm drawn.
After reading the introduction to Kim and revisiting it, I realized that from what I can tell, the other novels (Dickens, Austen, Eliot, etc.) are
safe novels. It's absolutely clear where the moral high ground is in Dickens. The stories are marvelously complex and interesting in the way they navigate the moral high ground but the moral high ground
itself is undisputed.
Similarly, the Austen and Eliot are shades of gray morality. The nature of these books, as I see it, are how to negotiate between the heart's desire and the needs/demands of society. Again, the moral high ground is undisputed. These are novels of
negotiation. For marriage. For wealth. For love.
(I know there are Austen fundamentalists that would burn me at the stake right now. So it goes.)
Both Kim and Huck both toss out this moral high ground in the first chapter. Morality, high or otherwise, is itself suspect. The path Kim and Huck have to decide is not how to negotiate the path through morality but what is the nature of a morality to which they can subscribe. In Huck's case, it is freeing his friend Jim. Not because slavery is wrong or right (Huck thinks and has been taught it's proper for Jim to be a slave) but because his love for Jim requires him to act as a friend to this slave even if it means he'll go to Hell.
The moral decisions for Kim are not so clear. India, for that matter, is not so clear in this book. All manner of evil and heresy lie about. Kim could pick any one of them and be fine. This doesn't come up because to Kim they are not important. He has an inkling of higher things-- how could he not as a companion to a lama? But what drives him is not a moral decision (as drove Huck) but a denial of the morality itself. He is with Teshoo Lama. He is Teshoo's
chela (disciple). That is enough.
In painting Kim's story this way, Kipling strikes out from the safe, moral path to an area of risk. The moral ground of a thinking man is that which the thinking man decides it should be. What is right is what Kim decides it should be. In this way, Kim picks up burdens he chooses, not submitting to the will of others in his life. Morality becomes a matter of personal choice and cannot be dictated.
Now, that said, these are all interpretations of the actions of the character, Kim. Kim doesn't wade through this moral quagmire; he acts. But the acts he chooses change over the course of the novel from a lost but joyful boy to a sober but still joyful young man.
Huck made a moral decision that would make him an outcast in the culture from which he sprang but it is a decision that would gain him acceptance somewhere.
Kim made a different decision. Instead of choosing a particular point of view he denied the necessity of that choice. Kim is presented with having to pick a particular life: sahib, native, etc. He decides to be who he is (sahib, native and etc.) and embrace it. For Huck, the moral decision was to embrace an act. For Kim it is to embrace a life.
Neither choice, and neither book, is safe.
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