670 Kipling, Rudyard
is afraid that she will be sold off as a slave or a wife
as soon as her family returns to China. Nor can she
figure out how to become a woman warrior in a land
where there are no obvious evil rulers as in Chinese
stories of female heroism.
In the end Kingston’s novel suggests that tradi-
tions need to be handed down as well as modified as
the times change and as people settle in new places.
The reader is informed that even in China old
traditions are being destroyed by the Communist
government, depriving the first-generation immi-
grants of any hope that they might return to their
homeland. The narrative also suggests that second-
generation Chinese Americans need to explore new
options, including more formal education, in the
absence of arranged marriages and close-knit rural
communities. The last chapter of the novel, “A Song
for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” artfully expresses the
cultural and generational reconciliation the narra-
tor and her mother reach, through its final episode
about a Chinese female poet and warrior, Ts’ai Yung,
who was kidnapped by a barbarian and bore him
two children. Her children, who spoke no Chinese,
initially laughed at her when she spoke her native
tongue. One day, however, she sang a song about her
family in China, the emotional significance of which
the barbarians understood without comprehending
the words. Later, freed from her 12-year captivity
and returned to her family, Ts’ai Yung translated
the barbarians’ songs, one of which becomes part
of Chinese culture. Kingston’s narrator concludes
the narrative with the comment, “It translated well.”
This ending suggests that Kingston’s narrator and
her mother, or the older and younger generations of
the Chinese-American community, are finally able
to understand what each other values despite the
linguistic and cultural barriers.
Tomoko Kuribayashi
kiPLing, ruDyarD Kim (1900–1901)
In one sense, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is a simple
adventure story told against the backdrop of the
British Raj. From quite a different perspective, it is
the most ancient story of all—the quest for enlight-
enment and escape from the Wheel of Life. Kim is
torn between these two extremes in the story, as he
strives to become a faithful chela (servant in Hindi)
to a Tibetan lama, as well as a cunning spy of the
British empire. This crisis of identity reflects the
uncertain destiny of India herself, perched between
the ancient and modern worlds: For however indif-
ferent Kipling himself was to India’s independence,
Kim ends his story with the possibility (if not real-
ization) of becoming a free agent. Having helped
the lama find his river, he is still a number in the
imperial system, charting the unknown peripheries
of the British empire. Yet he remains an “Indian” in
the truest sense, as no language or caste is unknown
to him; the staggering diversity of this ancient world
is a story he can recite at will. How he tells this
story—and for whose benefit—is the true subject
of Kim, with its emphasis on timeless waters and
wheels that spin beyond the reach of history and the
maps of empire.
Joshua Grassoindividual and Society in Kim
Halfway through the novel, when Kim is being
initiated into the rules of the Great Game by the
“horse-dealer,” Mahbub Ali, he is told:Among Sahibs, never [forget] thou art a
Sahib, among the folk of Hind,
always [remember] thou art—
“What am I? Mussulman, Hindu, Jain, or
Buddhist? That is a hard knot.”Like the novel itself, Mahbub Ali refuses to answer
this question, simply confiding to Kim that he is “my
Little Friend of all the World.” Perhaps what makes
this work so compelling, and Kim such a rich figure
in English literature, is his ability to become every-
one, both Sahib, Hindu, and Muslim, in one of the
most racially divided corners of the British empire.
As the opening of the novel explains, Kim is the
illegitimate child of an Irish soldier and an English
nursemaid; however, like the young Kipling himself,
Kim is thrust into the culturally diverse world of
India, where he quickly learns to speak dozens of
“languages,” which he can use to adopt any caste
or religion. Yet where does this leave Kim? Initially,
he seems clearly marked for the “Indian” world, as
he cavorts with servants and street urchins and has