In India, his legacy is a matter of contention because his writing is centred on colonial times and many of his characters are intrinsically racist. It isn’t that Kipling himself was prejudiced particularly, but that the culture among the British colonists was superior in its view of the natives. Kipling therefore wrote his characters as he witnessed real people around him. It would be true to say that many Europeans had an elitist attitude to non-Caucasian races at that time, so it would be inappropriate to judge Kipling by modern standards of political correctness.
The Jungle Book
When The Jungle Book is mentioned, most people think of the Disney animated film. This actually has very little to do with the stories of Rudyard Kipling, as Walt Disney only took the basic idea of anthropomorphic jungle animals and transformed them into lovable children’s characters. Kipling’s characters and stories are far darker and fantastical. In fact, Kipling deliberately wrote his stories as fables, to provide moral and ethical guidance to his readers, both young and old. The first collection of stories was published in 1894, quickly followed by a second in 1895, appropriately titled The Second Jungle Book.
Mowgli, the central human character, is a young boy who has been raised by a she wolf. He is thus in the unique position of being able to communicate with the various animals of the jungle. There had been various tales of children having been raised by wild animals and this is where Kipling drew his inspiration from. Some of those tales had an element of truth to them, but the majority were myths. Nevertheless, they made a solid foundation for Kipling’s stories, as Mowgli was the ideal transitional character. In essence he was half human, half animal in his psychology. He also possessed the naivety of a child and was therefore open-minded and fearless.
Mowgli appears in three of the stories in The Jungle Book. There are seven all told, with a song chapter following each one. As well as Mowgli and his animal companions, there are stories about a white seal named Kotick, a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, another boy named Toomai, and a group of domesticated Indian animals living in an army barracks. Kipling anthropomorphizes throughout The Jungle Book, so that he is able to tell his stories from the animals’ point of view. In doing so, he manages to comment on human behaviour in an objective, as opposed to subjective way. The animals in his books observe society, free from the constraints of culture and etiquette, but they also have their own interests and concerns. In English literature the practice of writing human-like animals was established with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. The earliest use of this device however, dates back to the ancient Greeks, with Aesop’s fables. By using animals to teach people lessons in wisdom it somehow made it more acceptable and easier to digest, especially for younger readers.
In The Second Jungle Book we find Mowgli returned in the first five stories out of a total of eight. The second story, The King’s Ankus, illustrates very well Kipling’s use of Mowgli’s naive outlook on life. In the story Mowgli finds a very valuable, jewel encrusted ankus (an elephant stick), but to him it is just a curious object, which he tosses away unaware that to other humans it is priceless and even worth killing for. Kipling uses this as a metaphor for pointing out the ridiculousness of the want of wealth in society, when all that matters is that we are healthy and happy.
The remaining three stories are about an Indian politician, three scavenging animals having a quarrel and a young Inuit hunter. This final story and the story of the white seal Kotick, in the first book, are anomalies as they are not set in the jungle at all, but in the northern latitudes at or near the Arctic Circle. Although Kipling had spent some years living in India, he actually wrote both books whilst residing in the American state of Vermont, which borders with Canada. This is evidently where he got his inspiration for these two misplaced stories.
It also explains the distanced and romanticized view of India in his books. There is something about his approach to the stories that tells the reader that Kipling is evoking memories or confabulations of an India that perhaps never quite existed. This, however, does nothing to erode the charm of his writing and only serves to condense his images so that the reader is taken in fully by his fictional world.
How the Whale Got His Throat
In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth – so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small ’Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear, so as to be out of harm’s way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’ And the small ’Stute Fish said in a small ’stute voice, ‘Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?’
‘No,’ said the Whale. ‘What is it like?’
‘Nice,’ said the small ’Stute Fish. ‘Nice but nubbly.’
‘Then fetch me some,’ said the Whale, and he made the sea froth up with his tail.
‘One at a time is enough,’ said the ’Stute Fish. ‘If you swim to latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty West (that is Magic), you will find, sitting on a raft, in the middle of the sea, with nothing on but a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must not forget the suspenders, Best Beloved), and a jack-knife, one shipwrecked Mariner, who, it is only fair to tell you, is a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.’
So the Whale swam and swam to latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty West, as fast as he could swim, and on a raft, in the middle of the sea, with nothing to wear except a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must particularly remember the suspenders, Best Beloved), and a jack-knife, he found one single, solitary shipwrecked Mariner, trailing his toes in the water. (He had his Mummy’s leave to paddle, or else he would never have done it, because he was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.)
Then the Whale opened his mouth back and back and back till it nearly touched his tail, and he swallowed the shipwrecked Mariner, and the raft he was sitting on, and his blue canvas breeches, and the suspenders (which you must not forget), and the jack-knife – He swallowed them all down into his warm, dark, inside cupboards, and then he smacked his lips – so, and turned round three times on his tail.
But as soon as the Mariner, who was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity, found himself truly inside the Whale’s warm, dark, inside cupboards, he stumped and he jumped and he thumped and he bumped, and he pranced and he danced, and he banged and he clanged, and he hit and he bit, and he leaped and he creeped, and he prowled and he howled, and he hopped and he dropped, and he cried and he sighed, and he crawled and he bawled, and he stepped and he lepped, and he danced hornpipes where he shouldn’t, and the Whale felt most unhappy indeed. (Have you forgotten the suspenders?)
So he said to the ’Stute Fish, ‘This man is very nubbly, and besides he is making me hiccough. What shall I do?’
‘Tell him to come out,’ said the ’Stute Fish.
This is the picture of the Whale swallowing the Mariner with his infinite-resource-and-sagacity, and the raft and the jack-knife and his suspenders, which you must not forget. The buttony-things are the Mariner’s suspenders, and you can see the knife close by them. He is sitting on the raft, but it has tilted up sideways, so you don’t see much of it. The whity thing by the Mariner’s left hand is a piece of wood that he was trying to row the raft with when the Whale came along. The piece of wood is called the jaws-of-a-gaff. The Mariner left it outside when he went in. The Whale’s name was Smiler, and the Mariner was called Mr. Henry Albert Bivvens, A.B. The little ’Stute Fish is hiding under the Whale’s tummy, or else I would have drawn him. The reason