The Jungle Book

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of racism.

Throughout the stories in The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling explores the notion of social hierarchy through the relationships between humans and animals. In these stories, animal species create their own social systems, such as the Law of the Jungle or the Rules of the Beach, which determine leadership, status, and behavioral restrictions. Many of the stories in which humans interact with animals demonstrate that human wisdom sets mankind above animals, making them the natural “masters” of animals. However, animals are much more physically powerful than humans, necessitating that humans ally with certain animals such as wolves, buffalo, mongooses, or elephants, in order to overpower dangerous foes such as tigers, snakes, and other humans during military conflicts.

The submission of animals to humans is a notion drawn from the Christian Bible with which Rudyard Kipling would have been familiar. When God creates Adam and Eve, they are told: “[R]ule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28). Kipling expresses a similar concept in “Her Majesty’s Servants,” in which the animals used by the Anglo-Indian army are below the human soldiers in the chain of military command.