The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is a collection of stories by Rudyard Kipling first published in 1894. Rudyard Kipling was born to a British family living in India and spent the first six years of his life there before being sent to England for schooling. Kipling’s works reflect his colonialist upbringing and support for British imperial rule over India, as well as ideas of European racial and cultural superiority developed in the Victorian Era. While the seven stories in The Jungle Book focus primarily on animal characters, Kipling uses the animal world allegorically to comment upon and critique aspects of human society. The first three stories in the collection tell the story of Mowgli, a human child raised by Indian wolves and trained by jungle animals such as Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther. These stories were adapted into a film of the same name by Walt Disney in 1967.

The guide refers to the edition published in 1910 by The Century Co. 

Content Warning: This guide quotes stigmatizing language about mental illness and contains discussions of racism.

Story Summaries

Each story in The Jungle Book focuses on the world of animals, primarily Indian animals, and each story ends with an epigram in the form of a song or poem. The first three stories in The Jungle Book focus on the character of Mowgli, depicting his adoption by a wolf pack, his education in the jungle, and his eventual defeat of the tiger Shere Khan. In the first story, “Mowgli’s Brothers,” a pair of wolves called Rama and Raksha find a human baby who is being hunted by the partially “lame” tiger Shere Khan. The wolf mother, Raksha, becomes attached to the baby and decides to call him Mowgli, meaning frog. The wolf pack, led by a wolf called Akela, debates if they should adopt Mowgli. Shere Khan protests, demanding to eat him. Baloo the bear advocates for Mowgli’s adoption and Bagheera the panther kills a bull for the pack to eat in exchange for Mowgli’s life. Mowgli grows up with the wolves, but Shere Khan waits for his chance at revenge when Akela grows old and feeble. Bagheera advises Mowgli to go to the human village and bring back fire, which the animals call the “red flower.” When Akela becomes too old and is ousted as leader of the pack, Mowgli uses the fire to drive off Shere Khan. However, his use of human technology means that he must leave the jungle and go to live in the human village instead.

The second story, “Kaa’s Hunting,” is set before the ending of the previous story, during Mowgli’s childhood with the wolf pack. In this story, Baloo is teaching Mowgli to speak in the languages of various jungle animals. A group of monkeys called the Bandar-log abduct Mowgli, wanting to learn his human techniques for weaving sticks into houses, but lacking the intelligence and work ethic to do so. Baloo and Bagheera go to the python Kaa for help, since Kaa is known to climb trees and eat young monkeys. In the ruins of an ancient human city where the monkeys live, Baloo and Bagheera fight to free Mowgli, who is trapped in a room of cobras. Mowgli is able to speak to the cobras and avoid harm. Kaa entrances the monkeys with his “hunger dance,” hypnotizing them into walking toward him, to their deaths. Baloo and Bagheera are also hypnotized, but Mowgli’s human intelligence allows him to resist the python’s trick and free his friends from danger.

The third story, “Tiger! Tiger!,” picks up where the first left off, as Mowgli goes to live in the human village. He is adopted by a woman named Messua, but finds it difficult to adjust to human customs such as sleeping inside and wearing clothes. Mowgli is critical of the old men who tell superstitious stories about ghosts, and so he goes to herd the village buffalo. While he is out with the herd, his wolf brother comes to tell him that Shere Khan is back, recovered from the fire, and plans to hunt him. With the help of the wolves, Mowgli sets a trap for Shere Khan in a narrow canyon, using the wolves to herd the buffalos and trampling Shere Khan to death. However, the superstitious old man Buldeo sees Mowgli’s friendship with the wolves and tells the other villagers that Mowgli is a demon who can turn into an animal. The villagers throw stones at Mowgli, and he returns to the jungle with Shere Khan’s skin. He presents the hide to the pack and remains in the jungle until he grows up and marries.

“The White Seal” changes setting to an island in the Bering Sea. The protagonist is a young seal named Kotick who is an unusual pure white in color. Kotick sees other juvenile seals being clubbed to death by hunters. Rather than accepting this as a natural way of the world, Kotick spends years searching the seas for an island without human dangers for the seals to inhabit. He eventually discovers one, but he must fight another adult seal to persuade his people to leave and relocate to this new, superior island.

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” returns to an Indian setting and tells the story of a mongoose who is rescued from a flood by an English family. The mongoose, called Rikki-Tikki-Ravi for his chattering noises, defends the English child, Teddy, from a snake, winning him praise from the family. In the garden, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi discovers two cobras named Nag and Nagaina who have been eating young birds and are plotting to kill the human family. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi kills Nag while the cobra attempts to stage an ambush of the father in the bathroom. He overhears Nagaina talking about eggs she has laid in the garden and goes to find and destroy them. When he returns, he finds that Nagaina is about to bite Teddy, but Rikki-Tikki-Tavi tricks her into turning away by threatening to crush her last egg. He eventually chases her into a hole and kills her, saving the family and earning their affection.

“Toomai of the Elephants” follows an Indian child named Toomai whose father is an elephant driver in the Anglo-Indian army. He idolizes a white commander called “Peterson Sahib” who is skilled at catching wild elephants. Toomai’s father forbids him from going out to the jungle to catch elephants and the other soldiers tell him that he can only join when he sees an elephant dance. That night, Toomai’s family elephant, Kala Nag, escapes from the camp and allows Toomai to accompany him to a jungle clearing. There, Toomai sees a large group of elephants assemble and begin to stomp on the ground, clearing new space for their herd. He returns in the morning to triumphantly reveal that he has now seen an elephant dance and he is inducted into the forestry service.

The final story, “Her Majesty’s Servants,” depicts an overheard conversation that happens one night between the animals used for war in both the Anglo-Indian and Afghan armies. The animals—two mules, a camel, a horse, a bull, and an elephant—explain what they do in the army and why. The animals participate in a chain of command that goes all the way up to Queen Victoria. At a military parade the next day, a man from the Afghan army is impressed by the power and obedience of the Anglo-Indian army’s animals, lamenting that he wishes the people in Afghanistan could be as obedient.

Throughout these stories, Kipling uses the animal world to explore alterity, alienation, and authority in society, using the differences between animal species to articulate how different groups of humans interact under the law of an empire. In particular, The Jungle Book focuses on exceptional individuals whose innate qualities allow them to lead their societies, demonstrating what Kipling suggests is a “natural” hierarchy.