The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling

I was never a huge fan of the Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book as a kid.  I didn't hate it, by any means, I just didn't especially like it either.  Lack of princesses was its main problem.  However, when I saw the trailer for the new, live-action Jungle Book movie, it knocked my socks off!  It's coming out in April and it looks AWESOME!  So, I decided that I ought to read the actual novel first because it fits into my reading theme for the month, and so I can be *that person* in the theater that loudly whispers about all the differences between the book and the film. 

The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling are a set of two novels, each made up of several shorter stories featuring mostly animal characters.  The short stories are set up like individual fables, meant to teach the reader a lesson or to make some sort of comment on humanity.  Mowgli and company are in about half of the stories between the two books and the other tales feature unrelated animals from all over the world.  The stories are not in sequential order and only the parts that involve Mowgli follow any kind of larger narrative.  Sadly, I found this book very difficult to get into and I struggled to finish.

Since the Mowgli stories are what most people remember about The Jungle Book, I'll start there.  At the beginning of the novel, Mowgli, an abandoned child in India, is discovered by a pack of wolves and raised up in the jungle as one of their own.  He learns the laws of the jungle from Baloo, a bear who serves as his mentor.  He also bonds with Bagheera (a black panther) and Kaa (a snake), and has many adventures with them. His sworn enemy is the fearsome tiger, Shere Khan, whom his mother wolf tells him that he is destined to kill one day.  Most of Mowgli's stories center around the time he was ostracized from his wolf pack for being a man.  He lives in a village with other humans for a while, but they eventually turn against him when they discover his special relationship with wolves and assume he is some sort of demon.  As a child living between the human world and the animal world, Mowgli must work to discover a place where he belongs.

The Mowgli stories were by far the most readable parts of The Jungle Books.  The colorful cast of animal characters was enjoyable, and I couldn't help but root for Mowgli to succeed in his adventures.  These chapters of the novel felt like old-fashioned bed time stories, and they were reliably engaging, if a little slow at times.

The other stories in The Jungle Books were an exercise in frustration.  Long, boring, and disconnected from the most endearing characters in the novel, these chapters  were very tough to get through.  I regularly struggled to stay awake while reading.  A book that is essentially a collection of fables for children should not be a difficult read, but it took me much longer than it should have to finish the whole collection.  There is definitely a reason that Mowgli and his friends are the only things people remember about these novels.  Everything else is completely forgettable, with perhaps the exception of "Rikki-tikki-tavi," which is mainstay in middle school literature books.

I struggled to make sense of the lessons that Rudyard Kipling was trying to impart here.  Some of the stories show man to be a careless, violent creature, while other stories show man to be the master of all things in India.  I couldn't pin down Kipling's purpose, which bothered me while reading.  There was an intellectual inconsistency present that continually threw me off.  Also, the idea of British colonialism was somewhat glorified, with the white man being described as the most intelligent and dangerous creatures in existence, while the native Indian population is described as foolish, superstitious and cruel.  After reading Things Fall Apart earlier this month, I had little patience for this attitude.    

In the end, I didn't learn much from The Jungle Books. What should have been a fun set of stories was ruined by boring chapters and a suspect set of morals.  I appreciate that this is a classic of children's literature, but I don't really understand why. The final impression I have after finishing is one of vague racism and confusion.  This is one situation where the upcoming film adaptation will almost certainly be better than the original text.  What a disappointment.