For my English class, I read The Jungle Book by Rudgard Kipling. I also watched the official movie for this story to see and compare the two. This story takes place in the jungles of Central India and is an Indian Legend often told to children. This story is one of the many stories that me and my friends have all watched and can recall being amazing.
This story starts off with the ruthless Shere Khan who is hungry for “Indian food” as he calls it, or in other words, Indian people. So, he makes his way to a nearby village with many families and makes his bold entrance, exposing himself to the people. Naturally, these humans panic and run in order to save their lives. As they were caught up in the chaos, little Mowgli is traumatized by what he is seeing and locks eye contact with Shere Khan. Shere Khan is ready to make his move and notices a human hunter with a gun. This person immediately is starting to fire at the tiger. Within a couple of shots, Shere Khan is wounded in the rear end and disappears into the bushes. Mowgli on the other hand is worrying about where his parents are and if he is going to be able to find them. Being a kid, instead of waiting at the village for his parents to come back, he runs of into the jungle. Making this fatal decision, he runs and comes to find an interesting cave. Within the cave, he finds Father Wolf, Mother Wolf, and their little cub. With Mowgli’s presence, they are amazed at how cute he is and the cub begs her parents to let Mowgli into their home. Hesitantly, the cub’s parents say yes because the wolves have a rule that if a cub of any kind is abandoned, it is their responsibility to take care of it.
Years later, Mowgli is able to communicate with the animals and understand what they are saying. He makes many friends with animals like apes, turtles, elephants, Bagheera, the mountain lion, and Baloo, the bear. Mother Wolf and Father Wolf are what he calls his parents and what they consider their son. Pretty much everyone in the jungle looks to him as a son. Mowgli often swings from vines and learns more and more about the jungle everyday and loves every second of it. But, although he’s living in paradise, remains from his past had not yet been completely sorted out. In a surprise visit, Shere Khan appears after everyone thought he was dead and confronts Mowgli that he will get revenge on what his human people have done to him. After leaving everyone startled, Mowgli’s friends of the jungle help him train in order to defeat Shere Khan one day. This leaves Mowgli with a battle that he has to mentally and physically prepare himself for. What will Mowgli do in order to prepare himself for the battle that can come at anytime?
With all the things that Mowgli has gone through, by far, my favorite part of the story was when Mowgli went into the mysterious cave to find his wolf family. In the book, I visualized the family of wolves way differently. I thought of the wolves with totally different personalities. I thought of them as curious and have a hint of viciousness. But, when I watched the movie, my perspective totally changed. In the movie, the wolf family was so cute and sweet. They gave Mowgli unconditional love and acceptance. The wolves were not vicious at all and had the perfect coat of fur that was so fluffy and warm. This was definitely my favorite part of the story because it changed my whole perspective of the wolves and the movie and made me like the movie a tiny bit more.

Although the movie was generally good, and fit as much information from the book as possible, there was something that bothered me while watching the movie. With the book being very nice and descriptive, the movie was kind of low quality to me. I found myself paying more attention to the quality of the movie rather than to what was going on in the story. I understand that the movie was made 1994, but to me, it felt like I was watching something for children. Since there was talking animals, sometimes I got confused throughout the movie on who was speaking since their mouths weren’t moving and there would be multiple animals on the screen. I don’t think that this was too much of a big problem for me, but it would have been nice to watch the movie without the little confusions.

To me, the movie and the book were generally amazing, but I think that if I had to give advice to someone on what they should do, I think that they should just read the book. The book actually kept me very interested and was very well descripted. I think this book would be perfect for an adult to read to their child, or for an adult to read for themselves. It was very educational about Central India and is very interesting. I think it is a story that everyone should know or at least have heard of. To me, I think that the theme was to not be afraid and to face your fears because it might benefit you somehow. I think this was the theme because Mowgli needed to face one of the biggest fears of his life and overcome it with logic and intelligence. Overall, it was a very good book and it was amazing to learn more about the background of the story of Mowgli.