I just finished reading The Jungle Books (there are two of them) by Rudyard Kipling for the first time. The stories in these books are very different than the renditions of them in the Disney’s 1967 cartoon film and 2016 modern production, my only previous exposure.
The characters and basic plot lines are similar about the foundling boy Mowgli, raised by wolves, protected by the panther Bagheera, and educated by Baloo the bear, but the movies do not capture Kipling’s rich description of the jungle environment nor his credible notions of how animals perceive the world.
There are also significant discrepancies in how the movies portray characters. For example, I recall both movies portraying the giant boa constrictor Kaa as an evil character, while in Kipling’s stories, he is one of Mowlgi’s greatest friends, who helps him through several dangerous situations, wrestles playfully with him, and coils himself to arrange a comfortable chair for Mowgli to sit. Kaa is a snake to like and respect. The movies depict Mowgli mostly as a helpless, naïve, playful boy. In Kipling’s stories, he quickly grows to be a strong young man with courage, grace, wit and cunning and to ultimately reign as Lord of the Jungle.
The Jungle Books are a collection of 16 short stories and they aren’t all about Mowgli and his jungle adventures. There are stories about a seal who rescues his pod from hunters, secret elephant dances, animals in service to the British Empire, a politician turned holy man who saves a village, a young Inuit couple who save their tribe from starvation and more. They are all the perfect length to read at bedtime. I imagine that’s because Kipling wrote them to be read by their parents to children. Being the great writer that he was, the stories are gripping and entertaining adventures for children, with depth, complexity and moral issues to engage parents.
The Jungle Books engaged me in many ways, but most of all by how Kipling portrays death from an animal’s perspective throughout his stories. Death occurs every day and every night in the animal world, as creatures either kill or are killed as part of the natural food chain. Kipling’s animal characters all accept death as the inevitable end to life. Killing for food is a respected matter of fact and scavengers make sure no part of any animal killed goes to waste. Kipling’s predator characters are not fearless but do not fear dying from combat with fellow predators. In Kipling’s animals’ minds, death just happens.
I have forged close bonds with several animals over my life and have tried to understand how they see the world. My observations are similar to Kipling’s portrayals. Food is really important. Animals innately know themselves and their place in nature, be it killer or prey. Animals who live in groups know their social order, place in it and the security or insecurity of their position. Predators know, covet and protect their territory. Fertility and the prospect of sex drive animals out of their normal minds.
I have watched animals die and held several in their last moments of life. Once fear and pain leaves them, they die peaceful deaths, deaths that are sadly beautiful to witness and observe as human. Sad because a life seems like such a precious gift to lose to the ultimate mystery of death. Beautiful because the peaceful passing of a life ready to end seems to me a journey to a better place, where fear and suffering doesn’t exist.
I believe, though not aware of any scientific proof, that animals do not consciously know that they are going to die and that they have only the most rudimentary perception of time. I have often thought of this as a blessing. They live every day as a new day, not regretting yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. They don’t confuse themselves pondering unanswerable existential questions. They live in the present moment. Each pleasurable experience is the best one ever, each unpleasurable one the worst ever.
I’m not saying animals don’t have memories or that those memories aren’t significant to them. I just believe that animals don’t compare their present experience to a past one or project that the next one could be better or worse. There is a lot to say for living life as a human this way, to live in the present, not suffer from holding onto the past or projecting into the future, to not fear death, to accept its mystery. Indeed, living life like this serves as the basis for spiritual teachings, like Zen and the Tao Te Ching, as well therapies for psychological health, like mindfulness.
Kipling’s stories constantly reinforce death as necessary for life in natural systems. I was poignantly reminded of this one day, while in the middle of reading his book, when I took a walk on the ranch where I live. I came across a female rabbit giving birth under a small leafless bush and I stopped to observe from a respectful distance. Her mate was dashing about crazily, stamping the ground and making little rushes at me, mounting her sexually, shielding her and the babies with is body. He seemed like a crazy young new father. After the mother had finished cleaning her babies, she just dashed off, running off playfully with the father, abandoning their babies under the bush. The two rabbits behaved like a young couple not yet ready for the responsibilities of parenthood.
The whole time this was going on, a hawk watched intently sitting atop a fence post, while another hawk circled lazily above, and a coyote stood peering down from a nearby hill. I looked pitifully at the three abandoned baby rabbits huddled together defenselessly on the ground. My humanity called strongly for me to rescue the babies. Then I looked over to the hawk on the fence, up at the one in the air, and made eye contact with the coyote. Who was I to take away a nice easy meal from them? Who was I to interfere with the natural order? Having just put down Kipling’s book helped me shift from my human perception of resisting death to a very plausible animal one of accepting it. I shouldn’t interfere. It wasn’t easy, but I took one last heart wrenching look at the little baby bunnies and then walked away. I sensed quiet acknowledgment from the two hawks that I was doing the right thing.
As to the coyote, well I had made eye contact with him and, if you read Kipling’s stories, you know that a coyote cannot tolerate that. He trotted off, stopping every couple hundred yards or so to look resentfully at me for a moment. As he climbed a more distant hill with rougher ground, he tried looking at me while he trotted along. Eyes off his path, he missed seeing a gully, tripped and fell down rather dramatically. He quickly picked himself up and trotted away with his head down, tail between his legs, obviously embarrassed by the clumsy spectacle he made of himself to me.
I think I could write my own Jungle Book story out of this little tragedy-comedy on the ranch.
I love books that entertain and get you thinking. When I finished the last of the Mowgli stories, wherein he is compelled by The Spring Running to leave the jungle and return to man, I felt sad. Sad because as I closed the book, I didn’t want to leave Bagheera, Baloo, Kaa and the brother wolves I grew to know and love.
The Jungle Books, by Rudyard Kipling. Highly recommended.