Introduction

The author of the book

Rudyard Kipling (1865~1936)

Rudyard Kipling was the first English author to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. He did this in 1907 and also won the pride and love of Britain. Having been born rich in India, where his father was a teacher and painter at the Bombay School of Art, he grew up in luxury in his youth.

At the age of 6, he was sent to an adopted home in England. He did not adapt well to life in England, so, at the age 17, he rejoined his parents in India, where he lived as an English newspaper reporter. In addition to his collection of news sources, he discovered a new area of India and the Indian way of life, and he exploited these human experiences in his stories and poems.

His stories in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) brought him early fame. His Jungle Book 1 (1894) made him a popular writer in the field of juvenile literature. Among his other works are Jungle Book 2, Kim, and Barrack-Room Ballads (1890, 1892).

Jungle Book The story commences with a tiger called Sheer Khan holding an infant in its mouth going into the jungle, where various animals live in order and peace in their own way. It turns out that the young boy is saved from the tiger and is adopted by a wolf pack. The boy is named Mowgli, which means “frog,” and he is raised as by a wolf as if he were a wolf cub.

Mowgli grows up to be a brave and smart wolf-boy under the protection and teaching of the commanding wolf Akela, the bear Baloo, and the leopard Bhageera. Meanwhile, Mowgli becomes aware that he is different from the rest of wolves, who come to dread him for his differences. The wolves then chase Mowgli out of their pack.

Kipling draws upon the jungle animals’ coexistence through mutual friendship and love, even showing them as being self-sacrificing.

Kipling ingeniously draws upon the distinctiveness of the beasts living in jungle and love and friendship between man and beasts.