Review of “The Second Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling
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I think most people are at least familiar with “The Jungle Book”. Many, like myself, might not have even been aware “The Second Jungle Book” existed. I ran into it after reading the first one and, since I enjoyed the first book, I decided to read the second. So here are my thoughts on it:
“How Fear Came”
In this tale there is a huge drought, and because of that there is a truce called by the water, where everyone can gather and hunting isn’t allowed there. This let’s all the animals be gathered together in the same place at the same time.
Shere Khan shows up and announces he killed a man, and that it was his right to.
Because it’s generally forbidden by the Law of the Jungle to kill man, Mowgli asks Hathi the elephant what right Shere Khan has after Shere Khan is shooed off by him. Hathi then tells the story of how the jungle came to be in the state it’s in.
To summarize shortly, the first elephant, Tha, creates the jungle and all the creatures eat grass and leaves. The first tiger is left to be judge, but ends up making the first kill during a quarrel between two bucks. He then runs off, and Tha puts the grey ape in charge, and the grey ape turns out to be a fool. So, frustrated, Tha says that Fear will be in charge, but the animals don’t know Fear. So Tha says to look for Fear.
They find Fear in the form of a man.
Later on the tiger comes back to confront fear and becomes afraid himself. Tha ends up offering to allow the tiger one night where he does not fear man, but man fears him, but says to show mercy on man when he is afraid.
Instead the tiger kills the man when his night comes, and Tha berates him for teaching man to kill. The tiger still has one night a year to not be afraid of man, but the rest of the year man will hunt the tiger in all ways, and man learns quickly.
I also liked little tidbits that show some interaction between Bagheera, Baloo and Mowgli in this, particularly when Bagheera makes a little comment about Hathi being long-winded.
“The Miracle of Purun Bhagat”
This is about a man named Purun Dass, who was Prime Minister of one of the states in India. He studies afar and learns about foreign culture, and becomes an expert at keeping good standing with both the English and Indians. Through hard work and learning he becomes highly praised all over as Sir Purun Dass, Knight Commander of the Order.
Then he decides to move on from that life and pursue a more beggarly life as Purun Baghat (more of a holy man). And when he does this so suddenly no one questions him. They allow him to go and give him his privacy.
He moves to the mountain by a village, where he spends his time near a shrine to Kali. The village sees him as a holy man and bring him food and care for him. It’s like that for quite some time, and all the animals become accustomed to him. He lives a life of stillness, trying to find himself.
One day a massive rainfall comes, and during this rainfall the animals start coming to him and trying to push and lead him out. He sees that the mountain is starting to come down and that it’ll crush the little village. Calling back to his time being a leader, he gets on the barasingha and runs down to warn the village, and they flee uphill from the impending mudslide.
The village is about seventy people, and they all get out and get to safety. After, they find Baghat dead, legs crossed and leaning against a tree, and they erect a shrine to him. They have no idea that he was ever famous or of high standing. For them he is the Baghat who saved their little village.
There are no villains in this story. It’s simply the tale of the life of this man who dedicated himself to every part of his life. This isn’t the type of tale I see often these days, and I do think it’s a good one to read.
In the beginning there’s an emphasis on how he is allowed to walk away from his old life without question. He feels it’s time to move on, and he does so, and he’s given privacy. I thought that was really interesting. Many of us want to get rich and reach the top, but where is the end? When would enough be enough? Not only that, but the fame. So many people try so hard to get followers and fame and it’s always more, more, more.
This is the type of tale we probably need more of. He reached his goals and he did well, and then the fame and the fortune meant nothing in the next part of his life, save for when he needed to reach inside of him and lean on the experience he gained in order to save others. It wasn’t about him being rich or famous.
Nor do the villagers care about him because he’s rich or famous. They have no idea. They simply appreciate that a holy man has visited them and show him respect and reverence. A wholesomeness and kindness seems to pervade this tale, and I really think it has some lessons that people can reflect on, especially these days. Being able to let go of worldly prosperity, giving people their privacy, showing deference and kindness to strangers. It really is very pure. I’d like to see more people discuss this.
And, to end my discussion of this one, my favorite description in here was “flayed off the skin of the ground”. That’s a good one.
“Letting in the Jungle”
We’re back to Mowgli and crew. This takes place after the death of Shere Khan. Mowgli has returned to the jungle after leaving the village, and as far as he’s concerned he’s left that all behind.
But the hunter Buldeo is coming after him, and Mowgli learns that the village is going to burn his human mother and father to death. He asks the wolves and Bagheera to frighten the hunters with their singing while he sneaks into the village to free his parents.
He sees that his parents have been abused and tied up in their house and he’s very angry, particularly for his mother. After Buldeo comes back he waits for him to distract the villagers with his tales of the jungle.
He gets his parents out and sends them off to go to a safe place. Mother Wolf also shows up to escort them. Notably, his human mother has faith in him when he says they won’t be harmed while going through the jungle, but his father has doubts. Bagheera decides to lie in the bed where they were tied up instead, so when the villagers come for them they instead see a black panther sitting there and get scared.
Mowgli is extremely angry about what the villagers were going to do, so he appeals to Hathi the elephant to ‘let the jungle in’ the village. After some talk Hathi agrees to take up his fight, and they spread rumors and stir up the jungle so that all sorts of critters are led to the village, where they stampede all over the crops and wreck everything. The villagers try to tough it out for some time with no food or anything, but with the jungle continuously destroying everything they have they’re eventually forced to leave.
This story shows a lot more of Mowgli’s struggles about who he is. At this point he knows both human words and the words of the jungle, and the animals are starting to show more fear of him because he has become more man-like after living in the village. But he also doesn’t understand the human ways and the nonsense tales Buldeo tells. He doesn’t quite fit in either world, and it’s very frustrating for him, because he hates humans but he also loves his human mother.
He’s also taking charge a lot more, so much so that he’s starting to command Hathi around. However, in the jungle, animals don’t complain so much about being bullied or anything. They respect power. So, although Mowgli would be behaving inappropriately for a human, they’re still with him.
I was curious to see where the story would go from there. What comes after destroying a whole village?
“The Undertakers”
This story was about a crane, a jackal and a crocodile discussing their interpretations of what men are up to, and the crocodile (“the Mugger”) discussing of a journey he took along the land to go get a feast. The Mugger has eaten many people in his time, and he speaks of different ways he does it, like how when the water shifts people fight over new lands and then get into physical fights, leaving some dead.
The Adjutant and Jackal sit and listen to him tell his tales, with some quips in between.
In the end he says that he regrets he was no able to get a little boy that he snapped at, because his slender hand likely slipped between his teeth. Then a man shows up and kills him with explosives. Neither the Jackal nor the Adjutant warn him, but watch as he is blown into three pieces and then his head cut off.
This story is all right, but I did think it was too similar to “Her Majesty’s Servants” in the first book. You have a trio of animals sitting and talking about how they see things, and by their descriptions you understand a war is going on among the humans, but they have their own priorities.
There were nice tidbits, like how the Mugger attempted to murder the Jackal while they were talking, but that’s just the way of things so no one took offense.
My favorite part was:
“Now the Jackal had spoken just to be listened to, for he knew flattery was the best way of getting things to eat, and the Mugger knew that the Jackal had spoken for this end, and the Jackal knew that the Mugger knew, and the Mugger knew that the Jackal knew that the Mugger knew, and so they were all very contented together.”
It was all right, my main complaint was that I thought it was too similar to the other story, but I do think I like the ending of this one more. It ends with a bang.
“The King’s Ankus”
Kaa tells Mowgli of a treasure he heard of that men kill each other for. They travel to the Cold Lairs, where they find the White Cobra hidden inside an old treasure trove. The trove is packed full of jewels and gems and other things, but Mowgli has no particular use for any of his. A fancy ankus catches his eye, and he decides to only take that.
The White Cobra that guards the treasure of the long gone king (because they’re in a ruins) threatens Mowgli, but Mowgli makes light of him. Still, he refuses to kill unless he wants to eat, and the cobra is old and no longer has poison, so they leave him and go on with the ankus.
The White Cobra warns him that even if he can’t kill him, the ankus will do the job because it brings death.
Mowgli goes to show it off to Bagheera, and Bagheera, having lived with humans before, knows that it’s for stabbing elephants in the head to make them obey. Once Mowgli finds out what it’s for he’s disgusted by it and throws it away, then he goes off to sleep.
When he wakes he decides to at least look at it again but it’s gone. Then he and Bagheera follow the tracks of different people. Of one man who hunted the one who originally found the ankus, and then takes it, and then there’s a group, and then the group all end up killing one another. By the end six people are dead fighting over the ankus.
Mowgli takes it back to the Cold Lairs and throws it back to the White Cobra, telling him to make more cobras and to keep watching over the treasure lest more die.
I do like the story overall, particularly the way Mowgli will just admit when he’s wrong. The one thing for me in regards to this one was actually the people. Of course, Mowgli grew up in the jungle, and he’s roamed about the jungle his whole life with the animals. When we read stories of Mowgli, he’s doing stuff with the animals. If people were in the jungle all the time, surely he’d have more contact with them as a child and maybe even be rescued when he was young.
So when Mowgli tosses aside the ankus and suddenly it seems like tons of people are running around the jungle killing each other for it in a single night, it makes the jungle seem like it’s crawling with people all the time. I know there would be hunters at such, but it seemed like a lot of human activity compared to the other stories. They would have no way to predict that the ankus would be left there, after all. It couldn’t be a planned theft. They would have to be wandering around there by chance.
Other than that I enjoyed the story, particularly the ending. I do think it has a good moral about greed and fighting.
“Quiquern”
Kotuko is an Inuit boy who gets his first dog. They eventually grow, and Kotuko becomes a hunter, and his dog becomes the leader of the pack after besting the black lead dog.
A girl and some others are also saved from starvation during this, and move into their village. The only one mentioned much beyond that is the girl, who I will call ‘the girl’ because that’s what the story calls her. Eventually, because of the harsh conditions they live in, they come to a time where there is no food around. Some of the dogs begin going mad and running off, including Kotuko’s dog and the second lead.
Kotuko, getting sort of delirious, believes a spirit has spoken to him and embarks on a quest to find food for them, and the girl goes along with him. They travel North, and when they’re almost out of food they find some two-headed, eight-legged dog creature called the “quiquern”. They believe they will be dying soon, but then think as all the ice shifts about that something good might come.
It turns out that the creature is actually the two runaway dogs hooked together, and those dogs are well-fed so they’ve found food. From there he manages to kill dozens of seals and bury them for the future, and takes what he can in his sleigh back to the village.
After saving the village he implies that he and the girl will get married.
In the end the angekok of the village takes credit for everything that happened, saying his spirit led Kotuko where he needed to go while he slept.
This story is pretty heavy in the descriptions. While it mentions briefly in passing that Kotuko was sad about losing his dog, it spends a great amount of time describing the ice and such. Overall it’s all right but a bit cumbersome.
I think one of the advantages Kipling has in his writing is that he often writes about cultures that you don’t often see in books. That in itself bring something a little fresh to the table, so even though I thought the story was droning on a bit about what the ice was doing, to the point that my eyes wanted to glaze over (the paragraphs were quite long), I was still interested by some of the unique cultural aspects.
And I do like, at the end, the journey of Kotuko’s picture-story around the world.
My favorite line was “The gale broke with a shriek of wind like the shriek of a train, and for three days and three nights it held, never varying one point, and never lulling even for a minute.” Particularly the shrieking train.
“Red Dog”
A lone wolf shows up at Council Rock, now led by Phao, and let’s them all know that the dholes killed his mate and four cubs. The wolves agree to help him collect the Blood Debt, but the dholes have massive packs of hundreds.
They try to send Mowgli off while the wolves fight, but Mowgli insists he will fight as one with the Pack. He runs off and finds Kaa, where he tells Kaa his plan of fighting the dholes in the shallows, but Kaa thinks his plan is foolish, so Mowgli asks his advice.
After thinking, Kaa takes Mowgli to the Place of Death, to show him the split rocks of the gorge, where a massive amount of bees are. Kaa then tells him of a buck that didn’t know the area once, being chased by a pack, and jumped to the waters. The pack chased after and the bees killed them, but the buck lives because it was ahead and set off it all, and went into the water.
They make a plan to lead the dholes into that trap and Kaa would be in the water to carry Mowgli away, and the wolves would be waiting on the shore for them.
So Mowgli goes off nto the trees and taunts the dholes to get them to follow him and not go to their lairs. When the leader tries to snap up at him he catches him and cuts off his tail, and uses that to keep them from going off anywhere else. He stays in the trees until twilight, when the bees are calm, and starts climbing away while being chased. Then he runs the rest and jumps into the gorge, and sets off the bees, which start a massive attack on the dholes behind him.
Tons of them get swarmed and killed by the bees, and others jump into the water to escape, and by the time they meet the wolves they still outnumber them but they’re exhausted.
Akela dies during this fight, and he tells Mowgli to go back to Man, but Mowgli refuses. He helps Akela up to sing the Death Song. It says, in the end, fifteen of the pack died and six lahinis (the female wolves).
At the beginning of this story we learn that Mother Wolf and Father Wolf have already passed. Moreover, Baloo and Bagheera are getting old. This was inevitable for Mowgli, because the lifespan of a human is a lot longer than the animals. Eventually everyone he knows will die without him.
And I think that’s why Akela tells him to go back to Man. The Pack he’s in now is not the same Pack he grew up in.
I think this is one of the harder hitting stories in “The Jungle Book” or “The Second Jungle Book”. In a way we’re seeing how Mowgli does not belong, because all he knows will be lost in time. We also have Akela’s death. Akela was supposed to die long ago when he became too slow for the hunt, but Mowgli saved him, and he stuck by Mowgli all the while, helping him defeat Shere Khan even.
Instead of simply being killed by the Pack and replaced, Akela was able to die fighting in battle. It’s a much grander death for him.
This was a pretty good story and not one that I’ve heard from adaptations or anything. And I was curious to see the end, but also wary, because I know that Akela wasn’t the only old one. And we must also remember that Mowgli is only a teenager in this, about fifteen, so he suffering a lot of loss now.
“The Spring Running”
Springtime is around and Mowgli is a seventeen-year-old boy now. The animals aren’t answering to Mowgli quickly for reasons he doesn’t understand. He feels extremely unhappy, and he thinks he must have been poisoned. Finally he goes running, and ends up running back to the village, where people have moved back in now.
The first home he happens upon belongs to Messua, who tells him that they went to the English to get justice, but by the time they village was checked all people were gone. She and her husband moved back and began plowing the fields again. She now has a new baby that is Mowgli’s little brother.
Mowgli stays there and Gray Brother shows up, and he ends up leaving with Gray Brother later. He’s happens to see a girl while he’s leaving.
He’s very confused about his feelings, but the animals all know that Man returns to Man. He runs back to Council Rock with Gray Brother, telling news of him going back to Man, but the only ones who show are Gray Brother, Baloo, Kaa and the other three of the Pack. Baloo is now blind with age.
Mowgli is sad because he thinks he’s being rejected by the Jungle, but Baloo explains to him that of those that originally took him in, only he and Bagheera still live. It is time for him to find new trails.
Bagheera shows to tell him his debt of the bull is repaid and he has nothing holding him there anymore, before Bagheera swiftly leaves.
It is a sad farewell, but time for Mowgli to returned to Men.
This is quite a sad ending, because it is about loss and moving on. Those that Mowgli grew up with are mostly gone now. He’s feeling loneliness that he doesn’t understand. And he has to go on a new path in life. It’s a sad but inevitable end, and in a way a type of ending many of us have felt for anyone who has lost a pet. And also the pain of being torn away from one home.
But even though there was a lot to leave behind, there was still a new dawn on the horizon.
Some of these older stories have a style of writing that don’t always mesh with me, but while at times there were things I saw that would have been elaborated on more or expounded upon less, I overall really enjoyed “The Jungle Book” and “The Second Jungle Book”. I can see why they’ve stood the test of time.
I think my favorite chapter overall was “Red Dog,” though the end of “The Spring Running” struck me, too. Kipling does use a lot of unique settings, so even if one of the side stories doesn’t quite work for you, you’ll probably still learn a lot.
I’m a little sad in a way that it ended there, because I would like to hear more of Mowgli’s tales, but that won’t happen. Still, Kipling painted a picture of his jungle and their rules vividly, and it was easy to understand the world he brought us into. It’s well worth a read if you ever wanted to look into the original. There are also songs included that I haven’t talked about, but if you enjoy little tidbits like that you’ll probably enjoy these.
What did you think of “The Jungle Book” and “The Second Jungle Book”? Did you care for the writing style? The side stories? How did the ending make you feel? I think it worked quite well for me, because at the end it was painful to see them parting.
Next entry it will be “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin, if you would like to read along. Look forward to seeing you there!
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