Throughout the novel, Kim often grapples with the nature of his identity. The son of a deceased Irish soldier and nursemaid, Kim is technically white, but his dark complexion, Indian accent, and native upbringing mean he is often mistaken as an “Asiatic.” At the start of the novel, Kim revels in such ambiguity, embracing his ability to socialize with, befriend, and manipulate anyone around him, white or black. Not bound to any single race, creed, religion, or even family, Kim is free to be “Friend of All the World.”
As Kim ventures out into the world, however, the ambiguity of Kim’s identity, once a boon, becomes a source of existential angst. Upon capturing him, for instance, the Mavericks’ attempt to impose their colonial vision of identity on Kim, trying to make him a “white man,” an event which causes Kim to ask, for the first time, “Who is Kim?” Though he escapes the Mavericks’ colonial machinations by entering into the service of Colonel Creighton, his training as a chain-man presents its own challenges, with Kim forced to sacrifice many of the pillars of his former identity, like his vernacular speech patterns, dark coloring, and wanderlust, to succeed. Though his natural talents are channeled into more productive means, doing so alienates Kim from the world he once knew and loved. Leaving St. Xavier’s, Kim grapples with this fact, asking again "Who is Kim?” and pondering who will remember him in the event of his death.
This soul-searching ultimately leads Kim to define himself outside of typical identity markers (race, creed, religion, or nationality), focusing instead on the relationships in his life. His rejection of the label “sahib” in favor of the lama’s title for him, “chela,” and his embrace of Mother Earth exemplify this shift, with the lama and the land being the two relationships which have consistently sustained and affirmed Kim’s existence. No longer interested in “Who is Kim?” but rather “What is Kim?,” Kim transcends socially constructed categories of identity like race or religion in favor of the tangible connections that have made him “what” he is —no longer just a ”A Friend Of All the World,” but a part of it too. Where Kim used to see himself as separate from the world, worrying over his smallness within in it, he now sees himself as fully intertwined in it, connected through both his fellow human beings and the earth itself.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Race, Identity, and Colonialism ThemeTracker
Race, Identity, and Colonialism Quotes in Kim
Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain singsong; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white – a poor white of the very poorest.
Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him wildly. This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he meant to investigate further, precisely as he would have investigated a new building or a strange festival in Lahore city. The lama was his trove, and he purposed to take possession. Kim’s mother had been Irish too.
Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he pretended to know more than he knew. But now he was playing for larger things — the sheer excitement and the sense of power.
‘It is not a good fancy,’ said the lama. ‘What profit to kill men?’
‘Very little – as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers. I do not speak without knowledge who have seen the land from Delhi south awash with blood.’
The lama as usual, was deep in meditation, but Kim’s bright eyes were wide open. This broad, smiling river of life, he considered, was a vast improvement on the cramped and crowded Lahore streets. There were new people and new sights at every stride – castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his experience.
‘A blessing on thee.’ The lama inclined his solemn head. ‘I have known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to thee – thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something of a small imp.
‘And I have never seen such a priest as thou.’ Kim considered the benevolent face wrinkly by wrinkle. ‘It is less than three days since we took the road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years.’
This was seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have it – bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and the beating of bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food, and new sights at every turn of the approving eye… India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right-and-left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved.
Oh, it is true. I knew it since my birth, but he could only find it out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers. He thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib, and between them they purpose to keep me in this Regiment or to send me to a madrissah [a school].
‘And I am a follower of the Way,‘ he said bitterly. ‘The sin is mine and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself for now I see it was but make-belief – that thou wast sent to me to aid in the Search. So my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and the wisdom of thy littler years. But those who follow the Way must permit not the fire of any desire or attachment, that is all Illusion. As says…’ He quoted an old, old Chinese text, backed with another, and reinforced these with a third. ‘I stepped aside from the Way, my chela. It was no fault of thine. I delighted in the sight of life, the new people upon the roads, and in thy joy at seeing these things. I was pleased with thee who should have considered my Search and my Search alone. Now I am sorrowful because thou art taken away and my River is far from me. It is the Law which I have broken!’
