In The Jungle Book, animals in the Jungle only refer to fire through a metaphor, calling it the "Red Flower." This “flower” consistently reappears as a motif that points to Mowgli being more than an animal. For example, when Bagheera instructs Mowgli to go and fetch some fire, he says:
‘Go thou down quickly to the men’s huts in the valley, and take some of the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.’
By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the Jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it [...]
In this passage, fire is made to seem less threatening, as the narrative refers to it as a “flower” that belongs to “man.” This euphemism evokes the brightness and warmth of flames without mentioning their destructive qualities. Bagheera also tells Mowgli that the “red flower” grows “in pots” outside human dwellings, as though it were a plant the boy could take a cutting of. The ability to control fire in The Jungle Book is something not even the wisest animals can understand, and so fire marks a fundamental separation between animals and humans.
Here, Bagheera tells Mowgli that he must bring fire to the Council. If he does so, he will have a more powerful ally against Shere Khan than the bear, the big cat, or the wolves. Bagheera is intelligent enough to plan to use fire as a weapon, but he has to have Mowgli retrieve and handle it. Knowing how to make, control and use fire marks the “Man-cub” as different, but it’s also one of the only things that allows the “naked” Man to stay at the top of the jungle’s food chain. When Mowgli is compelled to return to the humans, one of the first things he does is “sleep by the red flower.” This is an act the animals cannot imagine doing comfortably, but Mowgli delights in the warmth. The more Mowgli aligns himself with fire, the more aligned with humans he becomes.
