Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. He traveled widely during his life, living in England, India, the United States and South Africa.
During
his second visit to India, from 1882 to 1889, he worked as a journalist,
keeping exhaustive notes about life in that country. These notes became the
basis of many books, including the children’s story
The
Jungle Book.
Kipling
was an immensely popular author during his lifetime, producing a vast amount of
novels, poems, a semi-autobiography and several collections of short stories.
His
poem
If
is now included in innumerable anthologies around the world, and the Disney
version of
The
Jungle Book became one of the most popular children’s films of all time. He
received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
Chapter
1:
Mowgli,
the man-cub, arrives at the mountain top home of the wolf pack led by Akela. He
is taken in by Mother and Father Wolf. But Shere Khan, the tiger, wants to
catch and eat the man-cub. He is very hungry and in pain because his foot hurts
badly. He is finally accepted into the pack after Baloo, the bear, speaks for
him and
Bagheera,
the panther, gives the pack food in return.
Chapter
2:
Mowgli
grows up happily with the wolves. He learns the law of the jungle but also
watches the men in the village. As Akela becomes weaker and weaker, Shere Khan
gets closer and closer to the young wolves to get support to have Mowgli
excluded from the pack. Finally, Mowgli realises that it is time to move on.
But before he goes, he follows Bagheera’s advice: he gets the Red Flower from
outside the house of a man. The Red Flower is the animals’ way of talking about
fire. Animals are too afraid of it to use it as a weapon, but Mowgli is not an
animal.
He
is a man-cub. He hits Shere Khan with a fiery stick and leaves the
mountain-top, promising to return one day with the tiger’s skin. He cries for
the first time and Bagheera sees he is now a man.
Chapter
3:
Baloo,
the old brown bear, is Mowgli’s teacher during his happy years with the pack.
He teaches Mowgli the language of the jungle. He learns how to hunt, how to
communicate in the different animal languages, survival techniques and all
about jungle etiquette. Baloo and Bagheera also warn Mowgli to stay away from
the Monkeys because they are foolish and have no law. But one day, Mowgli is
kidnapped by the Monkeys. Mowgli remembers Baloo’s teachings and asks Chil, a
big bird, to notify Baloo and Bagheera. Baloo asks Kaa, a ten-metre-long snake
for help, and they track Mowgli to Monkey City.
Chapter
4:
Once
in Monkey City, the monkeys take Mowgli to a building with no doors or windows.
Bagheera is the first to arrive and fights hard with the monkeys, which want to
kill him. Mowgli suggests Bagheera gets into the water, where the monkeys will
not follow him.
Then
Baloo arrives and some monkeys attack him as well.
In
the end Kaa comes down, kills a few monkeys and the rest are so afraid that
they climb walls, running away from
Kaa.
The great snake starts a snake-dance which captivates all the animals,
including the bear and the panther.
Mowgli
sees no fascination in it, and helps his friends not to fall under the snake’s
spell. Mowgli has disobeyed the Law of the Jungle and is physically punished
for his mistake.
Chapter
5:
When
Mowgli leaves the Wolf Pack, he goes to a man village. There he is rescued by
Messua and her husband. They believe Mowgli is their own son, who was taken by
a tiger many years ago. Mowgli makes an effort to learn the ways and speech of
man. One of the men in the village thinks Mowgli must work, so he is given the
menial task of herding the cattle. One day, when he is looking after the
animals, Mowgli hears from Grey
Brother
(one of his wolf cub step-brothers) that Shere
Khan
still wants to kill and eat him. Mowgli still wants to take the tiger’s skin
back to the mountain-top. So, when
Mowgli
hears that Shere Khan has come back, he plans an ambush: he divides the cattle
up into two groups.
Akela
takes the bulls to one end of the Dry River and Grey
Brother
takes charge of the other cattle on the opposite end.
Chapter
6:
Mowgli
taunts Shere Khan and traps him in the middle of the river. Mowgli charges the
cattle to stampede, and Shere Khan is trampled to death. When
Mowgli
is skinning the tiger, Buldeo comes and tries to take the tiger skin for himself.
He can make good money by selling it. But Mowgli and Akela scare Buldeo away.
Buldeo
tells the villagers that Mowgli is not a boy and that he has strange
conversations with the wolves. The villagers stop Mowgli from returning to the
village. Now he is not welcome anywhere. He is too much a man for the wolves and
too much a wolf for the men. However, he fulfils his promise and drags the
tiger skin up to the mountain cave.
He
is welcomed back by his friends Bagheera and Akela and a small group of cubs
who will hunt with him in the future.
