Putting Mowgli to the Test: A Comparison of Heroism in Kipling's Stories and Disney's Film

Abstract

This research concerns Kipling’s novels The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895) and discusses the heroism of their main character Mowgli. Both versions are put to the test by comparing their lives to the heroic biography created by De Vries. In both the collection of stories and the film, Mowgli is left in the jungle as a baby and is raised by a foster-family of wolves, and ends up in all sorts of dangerous situations. For instance, dangerous situations that occur in both versions are his exile from his wolf pack and his fight with a monster. In both Kipling’s stories and the film, the boy goes through the same stages, but he behaves very differently. While Kipling’s Mowgli is brave and selfless and saves his friends, in the adaptation, Mowgli is ignorant and selfish and needs to be saved himself multiple times. The result is that the film has turned a colonial hero into a normal American boy that is not heroic. The differences between the two Mowglis suggest that Kipling’s Mowgli is an exemplary figure whose story is a temporary escape from reality, while Disney’s Mowgli’s is not.