Far from being anything like the
Disney version, the original stories about Mowgli are dark,
steeped in a feeling of danger and conflict - very much in keeping, in fact, with what one would imagine a life in the wilds of the
Indian
jungle to be like.
I was afraid of the book when I was very young - I wouldn't read it all until I was in my teens. It just kept one on one's toes - one felt every gut-wrenching moment of constant, unrelenting peril that Mowgli's life was in from the day his parents were killed in the jungle.
To read through the stories and follow him grow up from a feeble, naked, toothless frogling into a man and a wolf, a master over animals, one who is feared and does not fear any longer, is just an amazing experience. A reaffirmation of our safety and superiority - a very Victorian moral.