The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by the English writer Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, although the main character is a boy or "man" Mowgli, who grew up in the forest by wolves. The stories are set in the woods of India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seonee" (Seoni), in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
The main theme in this book is the abandonment followed by fostering, as in Mowgli's life, echoing Kipling's own childhood. This theme echoes in the victory of the protagonists including Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal over their enemies, as well as Mowgli's. Another important theme is law and freedom; The stories are not about animal behavior, it is still less about Darwin's struggle to survive, but about the human archetype in animal form. They teach respect for authority, obedience, and knowing one's place in society with the "law of the jungle", but the stories also portray the freedom to move between different worlds, such as when Mowgli moves between forest and village. Critics also note the wild and unlawful nature of the story, which reflects the irresponsible human side.
The Jungle Book remains popular, partly through many adaptations for movies and other media. Critics such as Swati Singh have noted that even critics are wary of Kipling because of imperialism that he suspects has admired the power of his story. The book has been influential in the Boy Scout movement, whose founder, Robert Baden-Powell, is Kipling's friend. Percy Grainger compiled his book Jungle Book Cycle around the excerpt from the book.
Video The Jungle Book
Context
The stories were first published in a magazine in 1893-94. The original publication contains illustrations, some by the author's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Rudyard Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he returned to India and worked there for about six and a half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Naulakha, the house he built in Dummerston, Vermont, in the United States. There is evidence that Kipling wrote a collection of stories for his daughter Josephine, who died of pneumonia in 1899, aged 6; the first edition of a book with handwritten notes by the author for his young daughter was found at Wimpole Hall National Trust in Cambridgeshire, England, in 2010.
Maps The Jungle Book
Messages
Description
The tales in this book (also in The Second Jungle Book, followed in 1895 and covering five more stories about Mowgli) are fairy tales, using animals in an anthropomorphic way to teach moral lessons. The verses "The Law of the Jungle", for example, establish rules for the safety of individuals, families, and communities. Kipling includes almost everything he knows or "hears or dreams about Indian forest". Other readers have interpreted the work as a political allegory and society at that time.
Origins
In a letter written and signed by Kipling in 1895, Kipling confessed to borrowing ideas and stories at the Jungle Book: "I am afraid that all the code in the outline has been made to meet the 'case needs': from it was taken physically from the rules of Esquimaux (South) for the division of booty, "Kipling wrote in the letter. "In fact, it is quite possible that I have helped myself carelessly but at the moment can not recall from the stories I have stolen."
Settings
Kipling lives in India since childhood, and most of the stories are clearly there, though not entirely clear where. The Kipling Society notes that Seonee (Seoni, in Madhya Pradesh state in central India) is mentioned several times, and that the first Mowgli story, "In Rukh", is set in a forest somewhere in northern India. "Mowgli's Brothers" is positioned in the Aravalli hills in Rajasthan (northwestern India) in the earliest manuscripts, later converted into Seonee, and Bagheera Tracks from "Oodeypore" (Udaipur), a reasonable long journey to Aravalli but far from Seoni. Seoni has a tropical savanna climate, with dry and rainy seasons. It is drier than the monsoon climate and does not support tropical rain forests. The parks and forest reserves that are claimed to be associated with the stories include Kanha Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, and Pench National Park, near Seoni. However, Kipling never visited the area.
Chapter
The book is compiled with stories in each chapter. Each story is followed by a poem that serves as an epigram.
Character
Many characters (marked *) are named only for Hindi names of their species: for example, Baloo is a transliteration of Hindi ???? Bh? L ?, "bear".
Illustration
Initial editions are illustrated by drawings in text by John Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard's father), and American artist W. H. Drake and Paul Frenzeny.
Editions and translations
This book has appeared in over 500 print editions, and over 100 audiobooks. It has been translated into at least 36 languages.
Themes
Ignore and facilitation
Critics such as Harry Ricketts have observed that Kipling returns repeatedly to the theme of the abandoned and mentored child, recalling his own feelings of abandonment. In his view, the enemy, Shere Khan, represents "the prospective elderly foster parent" who ultimately defeats and destroys Mowgli, as does Kipling when the boy has to confront Mrs Holloway instead of his parents. Ricketts writes that in "Mowgli's Brothers", the hero lost his human parents from the beginning, and the wolf advocates at his conclusion; and Mowgli was once again denied at the end of "Tiger! Tiger!", but each time compensated by the "queue of prospective adoptive parents" including wolves, Baloo, Bagheera and Kaa. In Ricketts's view, the power Mowgli has over all competing characters for affection is part of the book's appeal for children. The Indian historian Philip Mason also emphasized the myth of Mowgli, in which the hero who was fostered, "the freak among wolves and men", ultimately triumphed over his enemies. Mason notes that both Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal do the same.
Legal and freedom
Novelis Marghanita Laski argues that the purpose of the story is not to teach about animals but to create human archetypes through animal characters, with a lesson of respect for authority. He notes that Kipling was a founding friend of the Scout Movement, Robert Baden-Powell, underlying the junior Boy Scout "Wolf Cubs" in the story, and that Kipling admired the movement. Ricketts writes that Kipling is obsessed by rules, a theme that runs throughout the story and is called explicitly "the law of the jungle". Part of this, according to Ricketts, is Mrs. Holloway's evangelicalism, which is transformed accordingly. The rules required compliance and "know your place", but also provide social relationships and "freedom to move between different worlds". Sandra Kemp observes that the law may be heavily codified, but that its energies are also lawless, embodying part of a "floating, irresponsible, and self-serving" nature of human beings. There is a duality between two rural and forest worlds, but Mowgli, like Mang bats, can travel between the two.
Novelist and critic Angus Wilson noted that Kipling's law on forests is "far from Darwin", as no attacks are allowed in the watering hole, even in the dry season. In Wilson's view, the popularity of Mowgli's stories is not literary but moral: animals can follow the law with ease, but Mowgli has joy and sorrow, and the burden of making decisions. Kipling's biographer Charles Carrington argues that the "fairy tale" of Mowgli illustrates the truth directly, as well as the tale of success, through Mowgli's own character; through "good counselors", Bagheera and Baloo; through the repeated failures of Shere Khan's "bully"; through unlimited talk but useless about Bandar-log; and through law, which makes the "integrated whole" forest while allowing Mowgli's brothers to live as "Free People".
Academician Jan Montefiore commented on the legal balance and freedom of the book, "You do not need to ask Jacqueline Rose on adult dreams of children's innocence or children's literary theory Perry Nodelman who colonizes the minds of his readers with double fantasies about children both as royalty and embryo good citizens, to see that Jungle Books .. give their readers different adventure experiences as both freedom and as a service to a just Country. "
Reception
Sayan Mukherjee, writing for the Book Review Circle, calls The Jungle Book One of the most fun books of my childhood and even in adulthood, it is very informative about the British view of "their natives". "
Academician Jopi Nyman argued in 2001 that the book forms part of the construction of a "colonial British national identity" in Kipling's "imperial project". In Nyman's view, nation, race and class are mapped in stories, contributing to "imagining English as a site of power and racial superiority." Nyman suggests that the Jungle Books of monkeys and snakes represent "colonial animals" and "other racial people" in the Indian jungle, while the White Seal promotes a truly English "identity" in allegory nationalist 'story.
Swati Singh, in her book Secret History of the Jungle , notes that the tone is similar to Indian folklore, fable-like, and that critics have speculated that Kipling may have heard similar stories from Hinduism. carrier and his Portuguese father during his childhood in India. Singh also observes that Kipling weaves "magic and fantasy" into the story for his daughter Josephine, and even the critics who read Kipling for signs of imperialism can not help but admire the power of his story.
The Jungle Book came to be used as a motivational book by Cub Scouts, the junior element of the Scouting movement. The use of the universe of this book was approved by Kipling at the request of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, who originally requested author permission for the use of Memory Game of Kim in his plans to develop morale and fitness of working-class youth in the cities. Akela, the head of the wolf at The Jungle Book, has become a senior figure in the movement; this name is traditionally adopted by the leader of each Scout package.
Adaptations
The Jungle Book has been adapted many times in various media. In the literature, Robert Heinlein wrote the award-winning Hugo award-winning science fiction novel (1961), when his wife, Virginia, suggested a new version of The Jungle Book, a child raised by Martians instead of wolves. Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book (2008) was inspired by The Jungle Book . It follows the baby boy found and raised by the dead in the cemetery. It has many scenes that can be traced to Kipling, but with a dark touch of Gaiman.
In music, the Jungle Book cycle (1958) was written by Australian composer Percy Grainger, Kipling's diligent reader. It consists of excerpts from the book, set as chorus pieces and solos for soprano, tenor or baritone. French composer Charles Koechlin wrote some of the symphonic works inspired by this book. BBC Radio broadcasted an adaptation on February 14, 1994 and released it as a BBC audiobook in 2008. The film was directed by Chris Wallis with Nisha K. Nayar as Mowgli, Eartha Kitt as Kaa, Freddie Jones as Baloo, and Jonathan Hyde as Bagheera. The music is by John Mayer.
The text of the book has been adapted for younger readers by adapting comic books such as DC Comics Elseworlds, "Superman: The Feral Man of Steel", where a Supermanis baby was raised by wolves, while Bagheera, Akela, and Shere Khan made appearances. Marvel Comics published several adaptations by Mary Jo Duffy and Gil Kane at pages of Marvel Fanfare (vol.1). This was collected in one-shot Marvel Illustrated: The Jungle Book (2007). Bill Willingham's comic book series, Fables , features the The Jungle Book ' s Mowgli, Bagheera, and Shere Khan.
Many films are based on one of Kipling's stories, including Elephant Boy (1937), Russian: ?????? (Mowgli) was published as a Mowgli Adventure in the US, an animation released between 1967 and 1971, and incorporated into a single 96-minute film in 1973; Chuck Jones made cartoons for TV Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975), The White Seal (1975), and Mowgli's Brothers (1976). Many films, too, have been created from the book as a whole, such as the 1942 ZoltÃÆ'¡n Korda movie, Disney animation of 1967 and the 2016 remake, and the Japanese anime 1989 Jungle Book Shonen Mowgli .
Stuart Paterson wrote the stage adaptation in 2004, first produced by Birmingham Old Rep in 2004 and published in 2007 by Nick Hern Books.
See also
- Wild children in mythology and fiction
Note
References
External links
- 1910 edition at Archive.org
- The Jungle Book in Project Gutenberg
- Forest Book public domain audiobook on LibriVox
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments