Does Anyone know what the bigger meaning behind The Jungle Book is?

Question

like is there a political message to the story? I wondered this since the king of the apes is King Louis, like King Louis of France.

Answer 1

I took it as an affirmation of colonisim. Carnivores, or the colonizers, rule the jungle while the herbivores, or the natives who have been colonized, live by the carnivores' whim.

Answer 2

The Dark Hidden Meaning Behind The Jungle Book

To me #TheJungleBook is a story of how human evolution heralds the demise of an entire ecology! #Mowgli is sort of a spin off on John Milton s Paradise Lost about what happened to man when he came of age and lost his innocence! We stand at the brink of human induced threats of global catastrophe! We have set the jungle paradise on fire for our own interest! We have dethroned the King of the Beasts from the top of the food chain and destabilized the entire eco-system! #Raksha represents the domesticated best friends of man who love him despite his indiscretions towards them and will even fight to the death for him. #Baloo is the Sage who tried to convince man that he might have a chance to overcome his greed and be part of the Jungle if he embraced "the bare necessities of life". #Kaa represents Pathogens such as viruses that are natures way of fighting back to keep the human population within reason. #KingLouie represents human ancestors before we learned to control fire and became a liability to the ecology. #Bagheera is the force of nature that ignites a sense of responsibility, moral and altruism in man! #ShereKhan is the Champion of nature who man hates and fears! Rudyard Kipling projects this fear and makes the Bengal tiger, an endangered lifeform, out to be the hater and the antagonist instead.

I love #nostalgia associated with The Jungle Book but it is the saddest story I have ever heard! Man is the Villain here! Mowgli has no business in the Jungle! He does nothing but disturb the natural order and endangers those creatures who make the biosphere a more livable place! #IStandWithShereKhan

Answer 3

I doubt there's a political meaning, but there are some serious themes:

1. Mistrust of People Who are Different

The first three stories in Jungle Book, about half of the book, deal with Mowgli's boyhood and his adventures growing up amidst the wolf pack. From the very beginning, when he is presented to the wolf council as an infant, the reader feels the distrust and suspicion of the other wolves toward him. These feelings among the wolves are fanned by the cunning and devious Shere Khan, the tiger.
Although Mowgli is allowed to grow to adolescence, the reader senses the confrontation that is to come. Eventually, he is turned out of the pack, not because he did anything wrong, but because he is different from the wolves.
Having been expelled from the pack, Mowgli tries living with the humans in the small village just outside of the jungle. Although he is like the villagers in appearance, his habits and mannerisms are those of the wolves with whom he grew up."

2. The Jungle Book also constitutes a complex literary work of art in which the whole of Kipling's philosophy of life is expressed in miniature. They are best known for the 'Mowgli' stories; the tale of a baby abandoned and brought up by wolves, educated in the ways and secrets of the jungle by Kaa the python, Baloo the bear, and Bagheera the black panther. The stories, a mixture of fantasy, myth, and magic, are underpinned by Kipling's abiding preoccupation with the theme of self-discovery, and the nature of the 'Law'.

Answer 4

I can't recall a King Louis appearing in the original novel, and I searched the text in Project Gutenberg to confirm. Perhaps it's a Disney invention?

Regardless, the Jungle Book is more about Mowgli's philosophical, moral and intellectual development than anything else. If the major characters represent anything, I'd say it's virtues and vices.

Bear in mind that the French revolution finished almost a century before Kipling was born. It's hard to imagine him satirising dead royalty. While Kipling did get political in his writing, his sympathies appear to be pro-Empire and anti-Nazi and his methods tended toward irony more than satire and parody, e.g. in his poem "White Man's Burden".

Answer 5

The Jungle Book is representing Imperialism, plain and simple, just as its author Rudyard Kipling portrays in his famous poem "White Man's Burden".

Answer 6

the cold cut meaning ; the world is a dark place almost like a forest and sometimes your friends can't protect you from your enimies. you have to be a man and learn to fend for yourself

i don't think its political its about being a man or learning to be one

Answer 7

Sorry, but its just a nice story to me.
I Cr 13;8a

Answer 8

lesson from this book is : don't go near river without the puma, because there are crocodiles

Answer 9

Prejudice and mistrusting people who look/act different then you do.