The Jungle Book

“Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.”

This description of Bagheera compares his predatory and his comforting traits, evoking his role as Mowgli’s gentle protector who is also a particularly dangerous wild animal. While Bagheera has traits that make him a terrifying foe, his sweet voice and soft fur make him a suitable friend for a child, making him an archetypal figure of the children’s literature genre. Bagheera’s description conveys that animals value persuasive ability and intelligence as well as hunting prowess.

“Father Wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool, meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man.”

This simile compares Mowgli’s observation of the jungle to a businessman working in an office, demonstrating how the human and animal world are not as different as they seem. Mowgli and Father Wolf are analyzing the natural signs of life in the jungle in the same way that a business man analyzes his work. Through this simile, the barrier between civilized and wild is broken down; both societies require intelligent attention to the world.

“I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera, the Panther, and no man’s plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw, and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan.”

Bagheera reveals that he was raised in captivity, emphasizing the value of the knowledge he gained living with men while also suggesting that he is too strong to be contained by human technology. The lock that holds Bagheera is described as “silly,” denoting that, once Bagheera realized his own strength, human technology was not sufficient to contain him and he could freely choose to leave. This situation suggests an allegory for colonized people, whose strength cannot be fully suppressed by military technology, hinting toward the fragility of the British Empire.

“The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the hillside alone to the crops to meet those mysterious things that are called men.”

By referring to men as “mysterious things,” the narrator aligns the point of view with the animal world rather than the human one. The language defamiliarizes humans, treating them as exotic creatures in the same way that humans might view a newly discovered animal. This is one of Rudyard Kipling’s techniques when using animal society to expose the strange and absurd conventions of his own society.

“But a man-thing in their hands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw them down. They carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two.”

The Bandar-log monkeys are depicted as careless and unreasonable: picking up food and useful objects, but then destroying them on a whim. Mowgli, who has just been picked up by the monkeys, is therefore in a dangerous position, not because the monkeys are fierce predators, but because of their irrational behavior. This representation of human-related wastefulness is just one example of the many quasi-environmentalist points that Kipling makes throughout the novel about humans’ relationship with nature.

“From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city, looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads met; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides.”

This description of the Cold Lairs uses a long list of visual images to create a mysterious and melancholy atmosphere. By comparing the current condition of buildings and roads to how they were intended to be, the passage draws attention to how even the greatest human innovations can be reclaimed by nature. Kipling employs the moral didacticism of the fable genre since the Cold Lairs serve as a warning against pride, embodying the reality that while humans might be wiser than animals, their creations are not impervious to the power of the jungle.

“If you can imagine a lance, or a battering-ram, or a hammer, weighing nearly half a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can imagine roughly what Kaa was like when he fought.”

Kaa’s terrifying physical prowess is metaphorically compared to a human tool, emphasizing his strength and the force of his blows. In contrast, the “cool, quiet” mind of the snake suggests that a part of Kaa’s power comes from his calculating intelligence. By creating contrast between the python as a tool and the python as a rational mind, this quote reveals how humans conceive of animals both as things and as beings. Animals can seem like inanimate tools, but they also possess cognition like a human does.

“Then he began making loops and figures of eight with his body, and soft, oozy triangles that melted into squares and five-sided figures, and coiled mounds, never resting, never hurrying, and never stopping his low, humming song.”

The use of repetition in the description of the Dance of the Hunger of Kaa gives the prose a similar hypnotic quality. By repeating “and” and “never,” this passage creates the same feeling of endless looping and movement that Kaa uses to hypnotize the monkeys with his dance.

“Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps; from a panther’s point of view they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs, but for a seven-year-old boy they amounted to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid.”

Mowgli’s punishment after being rescued from the monkeys uses a euphemism to explore the differences between animal species and humans. While Bagheera thinks he is giving Mowgli “love-taps,” the reader is told that the difference in strength between a panther and a human child actually makes this a painful beating. Despite Mowgli’s adoption into the animal world, his physical differences from them force him to become adept at tolerating physical adversity.

“In the jungle he knew he was weak compared with the beasts, but in the village, people said he was as strong as a bull.”

Parallelism in the sentence structure and alliteration of the letter “b” emphasize the relativism of Mowgli’s status depending on whether he is in the jungle or the village. While Mowgli has grown up needing to use his wisdom to survive in the jungle, among the villagers he is considered like an animal because of his strength. Mowgli’s affiliation with a bull foreshadows how he will later ride the village bull, Rama, when he defeats Shere Khan.

“Then they sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and the day seems longer than most people’s whole lives, and perhaps they make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and put reeds into the men’s hands, and pretend that they are kings and the figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped.”

This description of children herding buffalo employs polysyndeton­—the repetition of the conjunction “and” —in order to slow the rhythm of the sentence and give it the same timeless feeling that the children experience. The detail that the songs have “odd native quavers” draws upon harmful Orientalist stereotypes of Indian music, creating an atmosphere of mystery and exoticism from a white British perspective. While childhood is often seen as a time of innocence, the fact that the children’s game involves ruling over a society that they have fashioned from mud and reeds suggests that all humans have a drive to master the world and order it as they see fit.

“So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that day on. But he was not always alone, because years afterward he became a man and married. But that is a story for grown-ups.”

The ending of the three Mowgli stories in The Jungle Book suggests that there will be more stories about Mowgli in the future. The diction shifts from the formal or mythological language found in the dialogue to a register aimed at children, referring to adults as “grown-ups.” By suggesting that the story of Mowgli’s marriage would be for adults, this quote implies that childhood ends at the age of sexual maturity.

“The jungle is shut to me and the village gates are shut. Why? / As Mang flies between the beasts and the birds so fly I between the village and the jungle. Why?”

Mowgli’s song expresses his confused emotions and the turmoil caused by being caught between two different worlds. The repetition of the rhetorical question “why?” at the end of each stanza conveys frustration and confusion, as the question has no clear answer. Mowgli compares himself to a bat who has characteristics of both birds and beasts, using a metaphor of difference between animal species to explain the difference between man and animal.

“Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale when he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to Japan, and I took him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to fly back to St. Paul’s again.”

The beginning of “The White Seal” establishes a frame narrative, indicating that the narrator heard the story from a winter wren. This adds to the sense of the tale as a myth or legend because it is orally passed down from the animal community. While frame narratives sometimes serve to blur the line between fiction and reality, this frame narrative is predicated on the narrator understanding animal speech, and so instead makes the tale more fanciful.

“Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against the Rules of the Beach.”

Paralleling the Law of the Jungle, the seals abide by the Rules of the Beach. These rules promote honorable behavior, rather than merely guidance for survival. This establishes that the seals are an orderly society, similar to a human community, rather than a collection of wild animals acting solely on instinct; this underscores the imperialist ideas in the collection.

“I haven’t been doing anything but fight since the middle of May. The beach is disgracefully crowded this season. I’ve met at least a hundred seals from Lukannon Beach, house-hunting. Why can’t people stay where they belong?”

Sea Catch complains to his wife Matkah using diction that comedically mimics the way that a contemporary British person might speak. By referring to seals seeking new territory as “house-hunting,” this dialogue equates an animal behavior with a relatable human practice. Sea Catch’s complaint that other seals should stay where they belong employs irony, as it will later be revealed that the seals are fleeing hunters and so are not simply “house-hunting,” but rather seeking refuge from danger.

“Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land; / Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame, / And still we sing Lukannon before the sealers came”

The seals of Lukannon sing this song in mourning for their old home. Through the use of anaphora—a repetition of the word “men” at the beginning of each clause—the song draws attention to the ways that humans exploit nature. The song evokes empathy for the animals by portraying them as creatures capable of sadness and nostalgia.

“This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment.”

The first line of “Rikki-tikki-tavi” sets up the main character as a warrior hero, drawing upon the tradition of animal fables to compare a mongoose to a soldier. By describing the conflict between the mongoose and the snakes as a war, the story implies that the conflict occurred for ideological reasons as well as the innate instinct for one species of animal to hunt another. Similarly, the story is set in a cantonment, meaning a military base, affiliating the mongoose with the Anglo-Indian army.

“Though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose’s business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too, and at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.”

This quote explores the relationship between courage and instinct. Because Rikki-tikki-tavi is a species of animal that naturally hunts snakes, he is not easily frightened by the cobras. Likewise, Nag fears the mongoose instinctively because he knows of their diet. The natural antipathy between the cobra and the mongoose suggests that Rikki-tikki-tavi is a natural protector, driven by his innate talents to defend the human family. These characteristics establish Rikki-tikki-tavi as an archetypal hero in a story.

“Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself; but he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.”

The final line of “Rikki-tikki-tavi” allows a sense of the return of status quo. By claiming that he keeps the garden safe with “tooth and jump and spring and bite,” the reader understands that the mongoose’s fighting strength keeps the garden safe. This series of images is grounded in the children’s literature genre since it subsumes violence into an entertaining group of action images written in a rhythmic, monosyllabic way.

“Toomai leaned forward and looked, and he felt that the forest was awake below him—awake and alive and crowded.”

This quote personifies the forest, referring to it as “awake” in order to suggest how the jungle is filled with life and activity, even at night. While humans sleep at night, the nocturnal species of the forest are active. By drawing attention to the abundance of animal activity in the forest, “Toomai of the Elephants” suggests that there is a world beyond human control.

“The elephants were stamping altogether now, and it sounded like a war-drum beaten at the mouth of a cave. The dew fell from the trees till there was no more left to fall, and the booming went on, and the ground rocked and shivered, and Little Toomai put his hands up to his ears to shut out the sound.”

Describing the stomping elephants with a simile that compares them to a “war-drum” affiliates the animals with military operations. Although these elephants are mainly wild and are not acting in the service of the army as they do by day, their dance is as regimented and disciplined as a marching army. This quote underscores Kipling’s allegory of elephants as soldiers.

“Luckily, I knew enough of beast language—not wild-beast language, but camp-beast language, of course—from the natives to know what he was saying.”

This story employs a frame narrative with a first-person point of view, creating a sense of verisimilitude and yet also childlike fantasy through the concept of a human understanding animal speech. The narrator’s differentiation between wild and camp beasts highlights the theme of The Social Hierarchy of Empire.