History Literature / TheJungleBook

* NotSoHarmless:

* EverythingsWorseWithBears: Averted with Baloo.

** Shere Khan.
** And Bagheera. More so than Shere Khan in the original book.

* PhysicalScarsPsychologicalScars: Hathi the elephant has a large white scar from the time he fell into a spiked pit trap and felt humiliated enough that when he escaped he razed three villages.

* {{Veganopia}}: According to the legend Hathi tells in "How Fear Came", in ancient times, all animals ate only "eaves and flowers and grass and fruit and bark".

* ExactEavesdropping: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the mongoose only hears the two cobras' cunning plan to rid the bungalow of humans. A bit ''too'' convenient, no?

* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Played straight in "Rikki Tikki Tavi".

* EverythingTryingToKillYou: In "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," India is a place where deadly venomous snakes can be ''anywhere'' and your only sure protection is having a companion mongoose.

An unrelated film called ''The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli & Baloo'' (1997) was released, possibly to cash in on the popularity of the above. It featured a still pre-teen Mowgli (Jamie Williams) pursued by the recruiting agents of a circus. The film performed poorly in theaters, but proved a hit in the video market. Which explains why there was yet another live action film, ''Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story'' (1998), a straight to video production. It featured Brandon Baker as Mowgli and various voice actors speaking for the animal characters. Despite featuring well-known actors such as ClancyBrown and NancyCartwright, it seems to be the most obscure of the three (though ironically the nearest Disney got to a faithful rendition of the novel).

* BadassBoast: The [[SnakesAreEvil snake villains]] have these in spades. See BadassCreed below.

* ArtifactOfAttraction

* BigBadassWolf

* CasualDangerDialog

* EloquentInMyNativeTongue

* FullFrontalAssault

* HumansAreBastards
* IGaveMyWord

* LamarckWasRight
* LiteraryAllusionTitle

* NakedOnArrival

* NoNameGiven

* WhoWillBellTheCat
* WildChild

* FriendToAllLivingThings
* HumansAreBastards

* NoNameGiven

!!The books provide examples of:

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: The cobras in ''Rikki-Tikki-Tavi'' are implied to be King Cobras, but they are described as looking like Indian Cobras. (Five foot long adult size, a white marking on the hood, etc.)
* {{Badass}}: Almost every main character. Also the cobras in ''Rikki-Tikki-Tavi''.
* BadassBoast: The [[SnakesAreEvil snake villains]] have these in spades. See BadassCreed below.
* BadassCreed:
** One is said by Karait, a minor villain.
--->"Be careful; I am Death!"
** From Nag, the cobra:
--->"Who is Nag? ''I'' am Nag. The great God Brahm put his mark upon all our people, when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!"

* CueTheFlyingPigs: At the beginning of "Toomai of the Elephants", the title character is told by Petersen Sahib that he may one day go into all elephant stockades "when thou hast seen the elephants dance"; although there is evidence that such events occur, no human has yet witnessed it, thus the statement equates to "never". Sure enough, though, by the end of the story, Little Toomai has seen the dance of the elephants.

* ExactEavesdropping:
** Mowgli overhears that his adoptive human parents are to be executed, and immediately sets about saving them.
** Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the mongoose only hears the two cobras' cunning plan to rid the bungalow of humans. A bit ''too'' convenient, no?

* FriendToAllLivingThings

* PublicDomainCharacter

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: Each anthology has a story that has nothing whatsoever to do with the jungle or India: in the first, it's ''The White Seal'', set in the northern oceans; in the second, it's ''Quiquern'', which is about huskies and Inuits.

* UnholyMatrimony: The two cobras in ''Rikki-Tikki-Tavi'' are mates who wish to assassinate all the humans in the house so that their children will have room to grow.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: In the stories, all animals have sapient intelligence like humans. But humans are still treated as objectively worth more than non-human animals. Especially in ''Rikki-Tikki-Tavi'' (A mongoose goes to kill two cobras who want to kill the humans in a bungalow so that they can raise their children.) Probably justified in this case, since the cobras would also be a potential threat to Rikki Tikki as well. Plus, the humans had saved the mongoose's life and so they deserved his protection for that matter at least.

* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Zigzagged. Snakes in particular are all over the morality scale.
** Kaa the python is a wise ally to Mowgli
** Nag and Nagaina are the villains in "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi."
** The cobras in the home of the Bandar-Log were portrayed reasonably well.
** The White Cobra in "The King's Angkus" was old and both physically and mentally infirm, but he was proven right about how deadly the titular artifact would be.
** There is also the holy cobra in the village. When it leaves, it is seen as the last straw and signal for the villagers to depart in "Letting In the Jungle".
** Crocodiles, on the other hand, are always evil: see "The Undertakers" and the poem "A Ripple Song".
*** Averted slightly with Mugger-Ghaut, who's not portrayed as evil at all, but being a predator, he *does* eat anyone dumb enough to fall into his river.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: In the stories, all animals have sapient intelligence like humans. But humans are still treated as objectively worth more than non-human animals. Especially in ''Rikki-Tikki-Tavi'' (A mongoose goes to kill two cobras who want to kill the humans in a bungalow so that they can raise their children.) Probably justified in this case, since the cobras would also be a potential threat to Rikki Tikki as well. Plus, the humans had saved the mongoose's life.

* TheRenfield: Tabaqui to Shere Khan.

* ButtMonkey: Tabaqui in many depictions tends to see his friendship with Shere Khan as something of "street cred". Since Shere Khan himself is often the butt of jokes from other animals (including ''his own mother''), it's needless to say it doesn't quite work that way. Oh, and the little guy has rabies too. Or at least, it's mentioned that jackals are ''prone'' to rabies.

* CatsAreMean: Played straight and subverted. Shere Khan the man-eating tiger is one of the main villains, but Bagheera the black panther is a trustworthy friend.

* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Subverted and played straight. Kaa the python is a wise ally to Mowgli, but the White Cobra proves to be insane, and Nag and Nagaina are the villains in "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." Apparently, Kipling had something against cobras.

** The White Cobra was only ''partly'' insane; his rather cryptic warning of death proved to be correct, just not for Mowgli.

A collection of stories published in 1894 by RudyardKipling, primarily about a WildChild named Mowgli, followed by a sequel, ''The Second Jungle Book'', in 1895. The stories detail Mowgli's childhood and youth, of his upbringing with the wolf-pack and his battles with the great lame tiger Shere Khan, of his friendship with Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear and Kaa the python, of his abduction by the Bandar-Log of the Cold Lairs, and his great war against the Dhole, of his meeting with the White Cobra and of his vendetta against his old people. Not all of the stories concerned Mowgli, the most well known ones being "Rikki Tikki Tavi" and "Toomai of the Elephants" in the first, and "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat" and "The Undertakers" in the second.

{{Disney}} found ''The Jungle Book'', and loved at least some of its ideas, so they chose it for [[DisneyAnimatedCanon one of their]] {{Animated Adaptation}}s. The result was and is widely considered [[Disney/TheJungleBook a great Disney film,]] the best and perhaps most original animated Disney film of the 1960s. That said, this adaptation of ''The Jungle Book'' was one of the greatest cases of AdaptationDisplacement in history, so great a case that Disney felt free to use some of Mowgli's friends and foes and rivals far, far away from the books and jungles where they were conceived, and so it considers them its own. This is the probable reason why Kipling doesn't receive a credit on ''WesternAnimation/{{TaleSpin}}'', an AnimatedSeries that puts three of the main characters from ''The Jungle Book'' (or Disney's version, at least) into an AlternateContinuity. A second series was created using the Disney interpretations ''Jungle Cubs'' [[SpinOffBabies reinventing the childhood lives of the animal residents into comical stories]]. See [[Disney/TheJungleBook Disney: The Jungle Book]].

An anime series based on the books was also created. ''Jungle Book: Shonen Mowgli'', though somewhat more faithful to the original novels than the Disney adaption, takes a similar more whimsical atmosphere, as well as [[AdaptationExpansion expanding the cast and plot line to fit it's over fifty episode long run]]. The anime aired during the late eighties and early nineties, amusingly around the same time Disney recycled some of their concepts adapted from the books for the DisneyAfternoon series ''WesternAnimation/{{TaleSpin}}''.

** The first story he appears in, "In the Rukh", takes place after the books, and Mowgli impresses his white, British boss, Gisborne. Then the boss's German boss, Muller, with a thick FunetikAksent pays a visit, recognizes what Mowgli is, and basically tells Gisborne to give him free rein.

** While an InformedAttribute for the most part, Tabaqui, often an irritating coward that serves as a bigger laughing stock of the Jungle than Shere Khan, is noted for his occasion bouts of insanity (suggested to be formed from rabies), biting and attacking anything in his path, during which point the wolves and even Shere Khan himself are fearful of him.

* RaisedByWolves: Mowgli is a quintessential, literal example.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: In the stories, all animals have sapient intelligence like humans. But humans are still treated as objectively worth more than non-human animals. Especially in ''Rikki-Tikki-Tavi'' (A mongoose goes to kill two cobras who want to kill the humans in a bungalow so that they can raise their children.)
** Probably justified in this case, since the cobras would also be a potential threat to Rikki Tikki as well. Not to mention that the humans had saved the mongoose's life.

* ShesAManInJapan: Bagheera is female in the Russian translation, mostly due to the fact that the Russian word for "panther" is grammatically feminine.

* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: It seems a bit ''too'' convenient that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's hearing is so sharp that he is able to hear the soft slithering and low whispers of snakes all away from the other side of the bungalow.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: Each anthology has a story that has nothing whatsoever to do with the jungle or India: in the first, it's ''The White Seal'', set in the northern oceans; in the second, it's ''Quiquern'', which is about huskies and Inuits.

* HonorableElephant: Elephants are portrayed as honorable and respectable (if not too bright) British army officers.