Kim Characters

There are a lot of adventure heroes we can think of right off the tops of our heads: Harry Potter. Katniss Everdeen. Bilbo Baggins. Luke Skywalker. And you know what they all have in common? They a...

The (Extremely) Odd CoupleActually, against all odds, the Teshoo lama and Kim have a lot in common. First, both of them are outsiders to Indian society—Kim because he doesn't totally fit in to an...

Mahbub Ali is an Afghan Muslim living in Lahore. His official job is as a horse trader, and he makes a ton of money buying and selling horses in the city… But secretly, Mahbub Ali is also a membe...

While on their way to the Grand Trunk Road, Kim and the lama meet an old man who has been given land by the British Indian Government. Not only has the government made him wealthy (at least, until...

The Kulu woman is pretty much the only major female character in this book, which makes us wonder why Kipling can't seem to imagine an adventure with women taking an active part in it. However Kim...

When Mahbub Ali gives Kim his first special message to bring to the Englishman in the city of Umballa, that Englishman turns out to be Colonel Creighton. Creighton is working for the "Ethnological...

Lurgan—often called Lurgan Sahib as a term of respect by the other characters in the book—is basically the Yoda of Kim. He lives in the summer capital city of Simla, in a strange house piled wi...

When Kim comes to stay with Lurgan in Simla for the first time, he finds an orphaned Hindu boy living with Lurgan as his son. Lurgan has taught this kid the Jewel Game, and seems to have high hopes...

In other sections (check out "Character Clues" and "Character Roles"), we emphasize that Kipling portrays this character as a ridiculous person. This character does actually have a name—Hurree Ch...

You know, for a teenager in boarding school, Kim spends a surprising amount of time with prostitutes. He watches Mahbub Ali go off with a "Flower of Delight" (1.191) in the first chapter (only for...

The curator of the Lahore Museum goes by two titles: first, the narrator refers to him by his official profession, which is curator of the Lahore Museum. A curator is someone who manages a museum's...

Kim's father and namesake Kimball O'Hara dies near the beginning of the book, and he certainly doesn't appear to have much of an influence on Kim himself (that we can see, at least). He's a former...

We never actually see Kim's mother directly, but when Father Victor figures out that Kimball O'Hara is Kim's father, he recalls, "I saw Kimball married myself to Annie Shott" (5.73). So Annie Shott...

These are the two boys Kim plays with in front of the Lahore Museum when he first meets the lama. Chota Lal is a rich Hindu man's son and Abdullah is the child of a Muslim candy-seller. But in spit...

When the Old Man Who Fought in '57 brings Kim and the lama to the Grand Trunk Road, they find his son waiting there. This middle-aged man is also in the army, but he is not the hero his father was:...

The Irish Maverick officers quickly realize that Kim will run away from the regiment given half a chance, but they want to make sure that he goes to school since he is the orphan child of one of th...

We never actually meet this character in person in the novel, but our lama, who was once also the Abbot of Suchzen Lamassery, mentions his fellow Abbot of the Lung-cho Lamassery as a man of great w...

The Reverend Arthur Bennett is the Anglican chaplain for the Irish Mavericks regiment. Because Kim looks like a Hindu boy when they first meet, Bennett assumes from the start that Kim is a thief an...

Father Victor is the Catholic chaplain for the Irish Mavericks regiment. Like Bennett, his Anglican colleague, Father Victor has his own strong prejudices toward the Indian people around him. He ha...

Huneefa is the blind woman who performs protective charms on Kim when he gets ready to set out on the road again as a grown-up seventeen-year-old. Of course, Kim doesn't actually ask to be exorcise...

Just after the Babu gives Kim his special Amulet of Secret Agent-ness, Kim stumbles on another member of the British Indian Secret Service. This guy happens to be in the train compartment where Kim...

Even though these two guys—one Russian and one Frenchman—are the main antagonists of Kim, we don't ever learn their actual names, and they don't appear in the novel for long at all. They repres...

We never actually see any of these guys on the pages of Kim, but they play an important role in the plot nevertheless. When Mahbub Ali first tells Kim to bring a message to the then-anonymous Engli...