The Jungle Books - Rudyard Kipling

I read The Jungle Book when I was young and found it rather hard going. Despite having an interest in wildlife, I've never particularly liked the concept of talking animals nor the ways in which Kipling portrays them. As most critics will be quick to point out, Kipling never actually visited the jungles of Central India, where the tale is set, so much of the description comes from an Imperialist, heavily exoticised imagination. He tells the story of Mowgli, a child (or 'man-cub') raised by wolves, and his subsequent adventures with his friends Bagheera the black panther, Baloo the bear, Kaa the python, and arch nemesis, Shere Khan the man-eating tiger. Scattered among the Mowgli installments are other, unrelated animal stories ranging between simple tales of beasts killing one another, to their dealings with mankind. Some are enjoyable, others borderline hallucinogenic. Essentially these were written for children, but as an example of Victorian literature, the attention deficit youngsters of today would be unable to comprehend them.

Kipling may have approached his subject from an orientalist perspective, but the core moral behind many of the stories is a solid one; namely that nature is good and the humans outside of it are evil. Saying this, I did not like the character of Mowgli, the noble savage who orders his beast allies around like slaves and insults them at every available opportunity. Likewise, his cruel treatment of Shere Khan and later, his orchestrated massacre of the dhole pack, was morally reprehensible. There is also a definite strain of racism and white supremacy if one cares to look for it, as I'm sure Edward Said pointed out already. This edition is divided into two parts: the original 1984 collection and the second part which came a year later. There is a deleted story in the appendix called 'In the Rukh' about a forestry worker who comes across a grown up Mowgli and hires him as a civil servant. This was likely left out due to its more adult nature, containing Mowgli's post-coital chat with a village girl he deflowered.

Rating: 3/5