The Jungle Book

by Rudyard Kipling

The Jungle Book: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

The Jungle Book is a canonical work of late 19th-century British Imperialism, which Kipling wrote for an audience of children after a long history of publishing short stories in magazines. The book was originally written for his own daughter, Josephine. It fits into many different genres, but it’s typically shelved with novels in the Bildungsroman tradition. A Bildungsroman is a novel of development. It usually focuses on the moral, psychological, and intellectual growth of a young protagonist. Readers of The Jungle Book follow Mowgli's progress from being an innocent infant in the jungle, to being a young man learning about his power in the animal and human worlds. Through his experiences, enmities and friendships, and the lessons he learns from the animals, the reader sees Mowgli’s path from boy to man. The book also serves as a primer for children to understand the hierarchy British imperialists believed existed between native populations and the British themselves. Even when Mowgli is a child, he is respected and even feared by the animals around him. This mirrors the British view at the time of how Indian people should see British colonizers.