Animal Instincts

Braedon Longfritz

The Jungle Book

By Rudyard Kipling

Humans and animals are different. We live in our world, they live in theirs. Now imagine a young boy growing up in the animal world, learning the animals’ societies and interactions, and facing the difficulties of being the only human in a world full of animals. That boy’s name is Mowgli. On the night he joined the animals, he was kidnapped by a tiger, Shere-Khan. Shere-Khan knew it was illegal for all animals to hunt men, yet he disobeyed the rules and captured one of men’s “cubs.” Fortunately, a family of wolves heard noise outside, found Shere-Khan attacking Mowgli, and rescued him. Shere-Khan then swore he would kill Mowgli, the only question was when.

Mowgli was adopted into the wolf’s pack to much controversy, however Shere-Khan never forgot about his promise. Eventually, Mowgli was forced to either kill Shere-Khan or be killed by him. However, after this chapter, the author of The Jungle Book decided to write the rest of the book as a series of short stories. I liked the first few chapters, the ones about Mowgli, as they had intriguing storylines that kept the reader turning the pages, and I liked some of the short stories afterwards, but there was one story especially that I found both boring and confusing. This one was called “Toomai of the Elephants.” In this chapter, the author begins by describing the customs of a group in India that tames and uses elephants for many different tasks. One family owns an old elephant that has served India for years, and is decently famous. The son of this family is named “Little Toomai.” Little Toomai is caught doing something he shouldn’t be, and the leader of their group yells at him and says he will never get what he wants until he sees the elephants dance. This is a common joke among their people, as the elephants dancing is not something any of the adults believe happens. Later that night, Little Toomai sees his elephant leaving his village and heading into the forest. Little Toomai calls out to the elephant, who then carries Little Toomai for miles into the forest. Eventually they arrive to a clearing in the forest, where hundreds of elephants are slowly moving around in the moonlight, and Little Toomai realizes it is the Elephants’ Dance. Little Toomai returns to his group, and he tells the rest of the group about his night. Some of the adults leave to see the tracks, and return telling everyone Little Toomai was telling the truth. All of their group then celebrate Little Toomai because he saw the Elephants' Dance. There were many interactions between the humans and their ranks and the jobs each rank had, but they seemed to be mostly irrelevant and didn’t stick in my brain. If we had had more time to get to know the various characters in this chapter, specifically Little Toomai, then I think readers would be more excited for him when he discovered the elephants dancing.      

The Jungle Book has many good stores in it, but also a few bad ones. Those bad ones suffer from not having enough time to get attached to its characters, where the good ones tell stories and have themes more strongly embedded inside them. For the most part, The Jungle Book will be a good read to anyone who enjoys imagining what it would be like to live with animals, however there are some chapters that are too lackluster to be worth reading.