Book – Jungle Book

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (1894) – A collection of stories about communities of wild animals mixed in with narrative poems.  The best known stories are the title story, and “Rikki Tikki Tavi”.  There are also stories about seals, elephants and animals working with the Royal Army serving in India.

Since the release of the 1967 Disney animated version of “The Jungle Book”, most people have likely assumed that they knew the book as well.  Having read it for myself I can say we probably don’t know the book at all.

Even the parts about Mowgli, the boy raised by a wolf pack, is different from the animated version we all remember.  The story has a darker edge.  All the characters are there.  Mowgli, Bagheera the black panther, Balloo the amiable bear in charge of Mowgli’s education, Kaa the snake, and Shere Khan the tiger.  But the story told here isn’t the cheerful, happy go-lucky “Jungle Book” of the movies.

The stories are broken up by “songs” that offer insights into the characters.  Honestly, I found these bits a little tiresome and generally just skimmed through them.  That’s a disservice to the writing of an author who was as revered for his poetry as for his prose in his lifetime.

The other stories are fascinating.  “Rikki Tikki Tavi” was something that I read when I was much younger and have always had a soft spot for it.  The single minded devotion to his task and protecting his human family appeal to me.  “The White Seal” tells a story of a rare white furred seal who is seeking a special home for his people where they will not be hunted.  Like any prophet he runs into a lot of social inertia to his idea.  “Toomai of the Elephants” is neat little story about a boy who can never follow in his father’s footsteps as an elephant mahout unless he can see the elephant’s dance.

I want to take a moment to touch on the author.  In his day, Rudyard Kipling was one of the, if not THE, most celebrated writers in the English language.  The youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.  Offered the chance to be knighted for his work, or to be the British Poet Laureate (he turned both honors down).  As I mentioned above, acclaimed for both his prose and poetry.  Yet today he is held in somewhat lesser esteem.  Not because the general opinion of his writing has changed much.  Kipling is still considered a brilliant writer.  But he does represent the colonial period of British rule in India, the Raj.  In the ’60s it became politically unacceptable to be associated with that kind of political thinking.  While I agree that there is no place for colonialism in the 21st Century, it has always struck me as the height of foolishness to project our modern standards backwards in time.  We are certainly entitled to disagree with past political stances, and should fight against those outmoded ideas in our current context.  But I just don’t see the logic of diminishing a man’s work because he was in tune with the general political zeitgeist of his time.