Progymnasmata

NOTE: This is also posted on the book review section of the forum. I post it here because there are elements of personal connection and some short anecdotes that give the review a personal character. (Hey! Did I just book review my own book review?)

But on to the jungle. Here's the actual review:

A Critical Review of The Jungle Book (Books 1 & 2)
By The Comedian

The two volumes that comprise the complete Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling consist mostly of interconnected short stories about the life of Mogli, who as a baby was taken in and raised by a family of wolves in the Indian jungle. The episodic nature of the book offers teasingly delightful glimpses into the life of one of literature’s famous jungle children; it’s as though the reader herself catches sight Mogli out of one eye before he disappears into the jungle again.

Of course, interspersed betwixt the Mogli narrative are stories of other jungle inhabitants: a mongoose, a domesticated elephant, a Brahmin man, and several others. The only stories that distinctly seem out of place are those that do not occur in or around the jungle. One, in particular, which details the life of a young arctic seal, is completely out-of-step with the rest of the narrative. For The Jungle Book, I found, is not so much about Mogli as it is about the jungle. The setting is book’s strongest character.

Whether The Jungle Book is a kid’s book, as it is commonly described, is up for debate. To be sure, as I read the stories, I would often relay them to my young daughter who delighted in the anthropomorphic depictions of Kipling’s talking animals and their distinctly human-like characteristics of compassion, obedience, loyalty, and friendship. Once I told her that the wolves of Mogli’s pack, while friends with him, didn’t trust him that much; they were still afraid of him.

“Why?” she asked.

“Are the chipmunks in our yard a little scared of you, even though you feed them sunflower seeds every day?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She said.

“Why do you think they’re scared?” I ask her.

“Because I’m a person, and they’re not; they think that I might hurt them.” She said.

“The same is true of the wolves in Mogli’s pack,” I say.

She agreed that this was reason enough to understand Mogli’s precarious position living as a wild animal in a wild place, yet clearly being neither of that place nor of that pack.

And, to me, this sense of displacement is the thematic core of Kipling’s work. Reading the book will help you to again wonder on the differences between human-kind and animal-kind, between the jungle and the village, between us and the life around us.