Kipling's Kim and Buck's The Good Earth: East Through Western Eyes

Introduction

Both Rudyard Kipling and Pearl Buck provided their readers with a realistic view of life in the East. Kipling's Kim offered a detailed account of the variety of life in India at the end of the 19th century, while Buck's The Good Earth chronicled the lives of a peasant family in China as it dealt with the challenges and obstacles of famine, poverty, and oppression. Both authors were very successful in conveying the problems of everyday life in the East to Western readers: each work was hugely popular and captured the imagination of the West by supplying vivid details and characterization through a realistic lens — a lens that only could have been supplied by an author who had personally been there and seen first-hand how life was led in China and India. For that reason, Kipling and Buck were able to convey a real sense of the East to people in the West who had never experienced it for themselves, but who could, in a world on the brink of globalization, finally experience it through the artistic novel form and obtain a better understanding of what life was like on the other side of the Earth.

Buck's Success in Conveying Chinese Peasant Life

The extent of Buck's success in conveying the problems of everyday life for an ordinary peasant family in 19th- and 20th-century China can be measured in the stunning descriptions and realism found on every page of The Good Earth. Buck's style of writing is simple and direct, unencumbered by abstract or metaphorical prose that might obscure the narrative structure. Her method of telling the story is straightforward, and the introduction to the saga of Wang Lung and his family is given with precision and simplicity: "It was Wang Lung's marriage day" (Buck 1) is how this novel — one that spans decades of tremendous dramatic swings — begins. This easy entrance into the world of the Chinese is inviting for the Western reader, as it does not forbid access with a circumspect or indecisive approach. Buck simply begins to tell, and she tells it without pomposity, condescension, or irony. The words are free of any malicious intent; there is, instead, a great spirit of sympathy intertwined with her descriptions of Wang Lung and the other characters, such as O-Lan and "Poor Fool," the wealthy landowners who gradually lose their wealth as a result of over-spending and opium usage, and the many others who populate the novel.

Buck's sympathetic portrayal of these characters helped Western audiences understand them more deeply and on a personal level. The story of Wang Lung — who at times acts nobly and at other times acts reprehensibly, as when he betrays O-Lan by giving her jewels to his concubine — reveals the true extremes to which a man can go, extremes that Western readers would recognize from their own histories involving wars and revolutions. At the same time, Buck does not twist or manipulate her characters into the larger-than-life heroes found in Old World myths or Romantic novels. Buck's characters are common and down-to-earth: they do not express profound sentiments that would seem alien to a peasant's way of thinking, and their concerns are primarily with the here and now. Wang Lung wants to own land. He wants to work hard and build savings for his family. His children face sickness. His wife sacrifices the life of her child so that the others in the family might live. When they are in the city, they are swept along with the common mob that enters the home of a wealthy man: they are not apart or separate from these incidents but are right there, caught up in the tides of events as they unfold. Wang Lung seeks to hide from the Chinese army in the city because he does not want to be conscripted — a fear that any Western reader could surely appreciate, even if it does not seem particularly honorable.

Wang's honor is depicted in other ways, however — such as when his son brings home a slab of stolen meat. Wang Lung throws it on the ground and refuses to eat it because he wants to teach his children not to steal: "Beggars we may be but thieves we are not" (Buck 111). This sentiment could be appreciated and respected by any Western reader — but so too could O-Lan's response when she picks up the meat and cooks it to feed her family in spite of what Wang Lung says. Buck depicts this action without commentary, neither praising nor condemning her. The author simply tells what happens and lets the reader process it. The Western reader is almost certain to sympathize with O-Lan: she knows what is in the child's heart, that he only stole in order to feed the family, and that Wang Lung's pride is the greater motivation behind his outburst. There is nothing in these characters that rings out as particularly unique; they are, instead, manifestations of people in China found in everyday life everywhere one looks — a people suffering from disadvantage, dealing with hunger, trying to keep a family together while holding on to their own sense of dignity and pride.

The story is also not without its own enchantment. Just as every Westerner is familiar with the concept of the American Dream, Buck places this kind of dream within the hearts of her characters and allows it to come true, if only by way of happenstance. Wang Lung and O-Lan are swept up by the mob as it enters the wealthy man's home; the wealthy man just so happens to pay Wang Lung to be spared, and O-Lan just so happens to find jewels in the house which she takes. Again, Buck does not condemn her characters but depicts them with empathy, showing that though they did not set out to rob or extort, when given the option of taking from the wealthy to benefit themselves, they do not let the opportunity pass. They see it as an instance in which they can finally obtain the dream they have desired for themselves.

In short, Buck appeals to Western sensibility by showing the ordinary lives of an ordinary Chinese family. She does not sentimentalize their struggles or romanticize them. She presents them simply and without affectation, judgment, or commentary. She also gives them the opportunity to pursue what every Westerner likewise seeks — the dream of prosperity and wealth. The Chinese dimension, of course, is that no matter how hard an individual works, the environment and the plight of the lower class are much more difficult to overcome in the East, which is why the dream only comes true for Wang Lung and his family by way of serendipity.

Kipling's Success in Portraying Everyday India

The extent to which Kipling succeeds in exploring the problems of everyday life in India through Kim is evident in the way he interweaves two grand themes: the spiritual life, represented by the Tibetan Lama seeking Enlightenment, and the pride and honor of serving the political life of the Great Game, represented by the intelligence and counter-intelligence operations of the British and the Russians in India. Whereas Buck gives an up-close, personal, and non-romantic look at the lives of an ordinary Chinese peasant family that ultimately becomes extraordinarily wealthy, Kipling depicts the everyday struggles of Indians through the lens of romantic adventure, using realistic descriptions and characters to keep the story grounded so that it is both wholly believable and wholly enchanting for Western readers.

The everyday problems explored by Kipling in Kim differ from those in The Good Earth — largely because the novel's hero is not an ethnic Indian, though he is a native of the land. He is the son of Irish immigrants, raised like an Indian in a country occupied by the British in the 19th century. As such, he learns all Indian customs and ways and is identifiable as a British subject only by the identification papers left by his father and by the Masonic certificate he wears around his neck. Recognized as a useful asset for British intelligence officers — since he so easily passes as Indian — Kim is pulled toward service of the Crown, educated, trained, and put into action. At the same time, he is pulled toward the spiritual life by the Lama, who seeks the River of Arrows so that he might escape the Wheel of Things, a metaphor for the endless trappings of political pursuit. Kipling thus reveals that the main struggle of everyday life in India is to balance these two opposing forces: the compulsion to serve the mighty political figures who rule the realm, and the compulsion to tend to one's spiritual life and transcend vain pursuits. Kim ultimately balances both, as his declaration makes clear: "I am not a Sahib. I am thy chela" (Kipling 207).

By showing Kim as a child cared for by a kindly Indian woman, by using a great deal of dialogue to convey a wide range of characters, and by integrating real-world espionage into the story, Kipling invites the Western reader to invest in the narrative in much the same way Buck does. Both authors, in other words, appeal to an aspect of Western sensibility. Buck appeals to the Western love of a success story — with a hint of sentimentality when Wang Lung weeps for O-Lan after realizing the depth of his betrayal — while Kipling appeals to the Western love of espionage. In a sense, Kim is one of the original Western spy thrillers, depicting the manner in which the British Crown uses its subjects to gain the upper hand in the Great Game — the political chess match between Russian and British intelligence. Kipling places the everyday struggles of Indians within this context and thereby elevates them to a level that will naturally interest the Western reader.

Had Kipling simply depicted everyday characters of India without this context, the story would have lacked the compelling dramatic appeal for Western readers that it otherwise possesses. By casting events against a backdrop of political intrigue, Kipling is able to show how an ordinary life in India is always, even at its most basic, still extraordinary in many ways. The range of characters Kim encounters helps reinforce the exotic nature of the Indian world, and Kim's ability to move between the Western and Indian worlds makes him appealing to Western readers as well.

Conclusion

The fascination with the East that exists in British and American literature allowed authors like Buck and Kipling to explore the everyday issues and problems of countries like China and India in realistic ways while applying a Western conceit to the arc of their narratives — the unlikely attainment of wealth for Buck's characters and the attainment of honor and enlightenment for Kipling's. By depicting these worlds realistically while also crafting narratives appealing to Western readers, both Buck and Kipling were able to successfully convey the everyday problems of the East — from poverty and oppression to hunger, class struggle, political entrapment, and the need for identity — by balancing Western ideals with Eastern experience to present a middle ground of realism mixed with idealism.

Works Cited

Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth. Washington Square Press, 2001.

Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. Diversion Books, 2016.