Rather than a page-turner I found myself fearful to turn the pages of Kipling's book, as I knew I would be haunted by Mowgli's sad existence.How Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book helped make the modern Disney, Part 2 In the second part of his essay on how Rudyard Kipling and ‘The Jungle Book’ influenced the modern Disney, Parker Lancaster takes a look at anthropomorphism, CGI and the success of previous adaptations… The books I enjoy give me a character I can understand and root for, but in my opinion The Jungle Book has failed here. Why would he like and respect Baloo and Bagheera when they physically hurt him for no reason at all? I should have felt some harmony with Mowgli as a young boy, but I didn't understand why he was not miserable in his situation. But once again, the terror of the place gets the better of him and he is back down below suffering another beating for getting himself into trouble.Īfter reading this classic, I actually felt rather bewildered: it didn't contain a single character that I either understood or felt empathy towards. When Mowgli swings from the vines in the gripped of the monkeys I thought it was a moment of release and wanted him to swing to freedom. I felt myself hearing the strange noises, feeling the ground slither with snakes and sweating in the heat of the penetrating environment of the jungle's overpowering force. Kipling does manage to create an intense world that sucks you in with his descriptions of the jungle and the creatures that live there. I don't think Kipling intended the reader to feel this way, but perhaps in his days, hitting a child was more common. I wanted Mowgli to escape from these two almost as much as I wanted him to escape the terrible monkeys. 'Bagheera gave him half a dozen love taps (…) but for a seven-year-old boy amounted to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid.' I found it very difficult to like these two characters because of this abuse towards Mowgli and without sympathetic characters to relate to the book was hard to enjoy. As a child reader, one of the most disturbing parts of this relationship is the physical violence Baloo and Bagheera continuously seem to use against Mowgli as part of their teaching.

Those include Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther, who become his tutors and protectors.

As he matures he starts to understand the 'Law of the Jungle' and the book follows his many adventures alongside the myriad creatures around him. Kipling tells the story of little Mowgli, a village boy who falls into the hands of a pack of wolves who raise him as their own in the Indian jungle. This is a dark and often unhappy tale which left me nervous and frightened and is more prone to cause a nightmare than a sweet dream. However, start reading the original and all preconceived notions might as well be thrown out the window.

The jungle book original story