The Jungle Book - Not Just for Children
By Earl Hunsinger
Like its better known counterpart Tarzan, The Jungle Book is often dismissed as just a collection of children's stories. They were originally published in a children's magazine. But while children around the world have certainly enjoyed the stories, as related in the many animated and live-action movies and television series that have been created over the years, many adults have also found the original stories to be appealing.
The Jungle Book, and its sequel, The Second Jungle Book, are collections of stories written by Rudyard Kipling at the end of the 19th century. The stories are set in the jungle of India as it was, or at least as the author imagined it, during that period. Perhaps the best known of these stories, and the ones usually made into movies, relate the adventures of Mowgli, a young Indian boy raised by wolves. Just as with Arthur Conan Doyle's Tarzan stories, The Jungle Book contains a much more serious story than is usually portrayed in the children's versions with which people are most familiar.
Although most of the main characters are animals, Kipling does a superb job of making you believe in them. He gives them words, yet they remain animals, with actions that, in our view, alternate between savage and noble, but that are in keeping with their respective natures. Among other things, this means that most of the animal characters do what animals do, they kill for food and survival. Are the stories violent? Perhaps they are; they are certainly more violent than the Disney animated cartoon. Yet it's interesting to note than even when outlining, in a poem, what it calls the law of the jungle, one of the stories specifies that the wolves would kill only to survive, "Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!" Some have interpreted these stories as commentaries on the society of his day. Whether allegorical of the political and social aspects of the world or not, the books are certainly entertaining, appealing to every boy's (and every man's or woman's) sense of adventure.
Like many books that are now considered classics, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book do more than entertain the reader. They educate. They transport the reader back in time and across the ocean, into an exotic world that no longer exists. Did the world portrayed in the stories, and in Kipling's other books, ever exist? Or do his books merely represent his romanticized view of Colonial India? It is commonly accepted that he was an imperialist, and that his political views and prejudices can be clearly seen in his writing. Even so, he was intimately acquainted with the India about which he wrote. He was born there and lived there for a number of years. He knew the place as few today can. Perhaps critics judge him too harshly if they criticize some of the details in his books. After all, he was writing fiction. While his writing may not have the authority of official records and history books, such records and histories were also written by men with particular beliefs, perspectives, and agendas. Whether accurate in every detail or not, his writings give us something that these cannot, a feel for the place.
Perhaps that is the key to the enduring quality of classic literature, the ability to transport the reader to another time and place. To provide the immersion necessary to see through the eyes of the hero, to hear the sounds, and smell the smells of the exotic world portrayed. As Kipling himself once said, "If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten." If for no other reason, his stories have value as history. Although written more than a hundred years ago, Kipling's stories have not been forgotten. They continue to entertain and educate us today.
Because they have passed into the public domain, most of Kipling's works, including The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, can now be found online at Project Gutenberg (and perhaps also at other websites). If you're not familiar with the adventures of the "man-cub" Mowgli and the other characters inhabiting the The Jungle Book, including the heroic mongoose Rikki Tikki Tavi and the young elephant handler Toomai, they're waiting for you there.
