The Jungle Books

"The children in those first two books are left to their own devices. But when we talk about them being alone, they are alone only some of the time. Mowgli, the main character of The Jungle Books , of course, is alone period because he’s the manchild and the only one there. Yes, and he has great adventures: we have the Bandar-log, and Kaa the snake who at one point almost swallows up Mowgli’s later protector, Bagheera the panther. But there is nobody else. He’s utterly alone, and he’s only got wolf cubs, but he doesn’t know it. I mean, he thinks he is just part of the jungle and there is that terrible moment in The Jungle Books where he realises how the wolves in general hate him and he just stands there crying, although by then he’s an older teenager, but it’s because he has never understood that he was different. There’s a whole world there in that scene. I don’t even know if Kipling realised it when he was writing it, but it’s the utter breaking of innocence, because he thought he was part of them, that he was loved by them, that he was one of them, and then suddenly has to realise that he’s completely different and he’s not one of them, and they don’t actually love him at all. Now, what a moment! What a moment! And then, of course, he goes off and explores mankind. Yes, totally. It’s a shock moment. I think that Mowgli is very, very accepting of everything, but all the time there’s a basic stability there. Baloo the bear and Bagheera love him, the mother and father wolf love him, Shere Khan the Tiger is the enemy, there’s danger here and there’s danger there. He survives these various adventures but there is an underlying stability there and I don’t think that doors open and shut for him until there’s this tremendous wham! Right at the point where he suddenly realises that he’s not one of them and that they don’t all love him – I think that’s a terrible moment. You know, if he was confronting Shere Khan, that’s nothing. But he was confronting those that he had utterly taken for granted and relied on. I think that is a really decisive moment: it’s the breaking of innocence and he can never have it again. Once innocence has been lost it can’t be reinstated."