If, on the other hand, the lama is unsuspecting of Kim acting as an agent for the British colonial services, how will he react when he finds out? I am confident Kipling will resolve these questions, because he was a truly talented writer. If Colonel Creighton thought Kim was worth educating, why wouldn't he find the money? Why would a Tibetan holy man consider it to be in a boy's spiritual interest to be taught at a Roman Catholic school? Perhaps the lama acts for the British too, but If the lama was somehow complicit in the Great Game, why would he favour the British colonial government in India over the Russians. I also wondered why the lama paid for Kim's expensive education at a colonial school. However, the old man is not a fool, so I wonder whether he knows he is being used but has not let on. Kim appears to be using the unsuspecting lama as cover, yet he truly respects the old man. There seems to be some conflict in loyalty, on the face of it. He is genuinely devoted to the lama, yet he is also spying for the British colonial services in India. No man can serve two masters, yet this is what Kim appears to be doing. I highly recommend this book for both children and adults.-Submitted by Motibutton He was, however, very loyal to his own native country of England, whatever its politics.

From his novels and poetry, one feels that Kipling loved and respected the native peoples of India and did not feel superior to them in the way that most English did at that time. Rudyard Kipling's politics have been sneered at in the last 50 years because they are no longer politcally correct but I feel they should be viewed as of the time in which he lived. He befriends an aged Tibetan lama and following the lama on his quest for a sacred river becomes both Kim's raison d'etre and the framework for the plot. He knows Indian culture of the streets through and through and he has some most interesting acquaintances. Kim is a boy whose parents are Irish but they both die when he is young and from his earliest years he is brought up as a native of the poorest caste. As an adult, the political climate of those times became clear to me and was an invaluable help to my history studies in high school and college. At first I read it because it has an exciting plot, a spy novel, in effect very enticing for a kid. (That's been 62 years of reading Kim.) It is, in fact, possibly my favorite novel. ~ I first read this book when I was ten years old and have read it again and again over the years. Kim captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj. The boy juggles Imperialist life with his spiritual bond to the lama, who searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.

'Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way, By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, Be gentle when the heathen pray, To Buddha at Kamakura!'Ī white youth in India, becomes friends with an old ascetic priest, the lama.

Kim kipling