The Jungle Books (Series: The One Hundred Greatest Books Ever Written)

Rudyard Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOK (1894) and THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK (1895) were written in Vermont. There he and his American wife Carrie were expecting their first child. *** The word "Jungle" as used in the two volumes which together constitute THE JUNGLE BOOKS goes far beyond the thick forests of Central India in which are set the childhood and coming to manhood of the human wolf-cub Mowgli "the Frog." The broader jungle even includes the cold climates of the Arctic and Anarctic. And JUNGLE BOOKS animals include not only Kaa the rock python, Baloo the bear, the Bandar Log Monkey People and Shere Khan the malicious lame tiger but also seals, sea lions, walruses and sharks. *** Kipling's Jungle, as Daniel Karlin points out in the Introduction to his edition of THE JUNGLE BOOKS, is "a border area." It is principally inhabited by animals of the land and the sea, but they are not far from humans. Animals communicate with one another and sometimes they can understand the language of men, especially if they have been raised in captivity and serve Queen Victoria's Raj as army elephants, mules, cavalry mounts, artillery bullocks or camels. *** Mowgli, the man cub, separated from his wood cutting parents by a hungry Shere Khan the tiger, toddles fearlessly into a family of wolves, shoves in among the cubs and begins to suckle. In the last tale of THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK, nearly 17 year old Mowgli is inevitably and by consent of the Jungle creatures drawn back into his human family. The clincher? "... a girl in a white cloth came down some path that led from the outskirts of the village. ... He could almost have touched her with his hand when the warm green stalks closed before his face and he disappeared like a ghost." To the question of Gray Brother, his loyal wolf follower: "And now what is it to be?" Mowgli replies "And now I do not know." Just before he sighted the girl, Mowgli was fully determined to remain among the wolves, poison people (cobras), bears, deer, bees, panthers and other jungle dwellers as their acknowledged ruler. But one sight of a girl and he must, he understands not why, return to his human family. *** THE JUNGLE BOOKS are as fascinating for adults as for children. Baden Powell's Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Walt Disney have drawn on their imagery and wisdom. But nothing can substitute for the prose and poetry in Rudyard Kipling's telling of tales of more than one kind of jungle. -OOO-