Considering Kim’s Dual Identity in the Post-colonial Discourse

It is becoming significant for individuals to find their own individual identities, as the today’s ongoing globalization has become much more complicated. A similar situation occurred when the British Empire influenced the world politically, economically, and culturally in the nineteenth century. In order to grasp human intrinsic identities, my thesis aims to use postcolonial theories to examine characters’ identities in a nineteenth-century British novel, Kipling’s Kim (1901). In Kipling’s Kim, I examine Kim, an Irish boy who experiences racial identity confusion by living in British India. Kim’s identity is ambiguous as his background is complicated: his parents are Irish, Kim was born in India, he was educated in a British school, and he participated in the Great Game. It would prove inadequate to try to see Kim’s identity based on binary oppositions, as Kim’s identity is neither British nor native Indian. Aside from simply being a person named Kim, Kim’s identity consists of being someone who has cultural hybridity. Through the main character of Kim, Kipling suggests that a Brit who understands the local Indian culture and society, as Kim does, would govern India with ease. Overall, Kipling’s Kim elaborates on why or how India should be governed by Britain and also seems to justify the British rule of India. In Kim, Kipling creates the main character of Kim, who has cultural hybridity and whose process of personal growth throughout the novel depicts Kipling’s ideas on how to govern India easily. In order to justify British rule in India, Kipling also depicts how British-Indian society was developed by Britain, also through the character of Kim. Looking into characters’ identities throughout nineteenth-century British novels helps modern readers who live in this complicated world to grasp human intrinsic identities.