SOURCE: Matteo, Chris Ann. “Le grande jeu and the Great Game: The Politics of Play in Walter Scott's Waverley and Rudyard Kipling's Kim.” Journal of Narrative Theory 30, no. 2 (summer 2000): 163-86.

In the following essay, Matteo suggests that Waverley and Kim are Bildungsromane that portray the development of not only a protagonist, but also of the British Empire in its colonial subjugation of Scotland (in Waverly) and India (in Kim). Matteo contends that both novels use games as metaphors for the gain or loss of power of individuals and nations.

Although nearly a full century divides Waverley's anonymous publication in 1814 and the 1901 date on Kipling's novel, the Great Game functions in both tales as a specific, metaphoric code word for the relationship between England and her annexed colonies. Set in his vast and diverse contemporary context of turn-of-the-century India, Kipling's novel conceives the Great Game as an intricate...