The Jungle Book

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Middle Grade | Published in 1894

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Mowgli’s Brothers”

“Kaa’s Hunting”

“Tiger! Tiger!”

“The White Seal”

“Rikki-tikki-tavi”

“Toomai of the Elephants”

“Her Majesty’s Servants”

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

“Rikki-tikki-tavi”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Rikki-tikki-tavi” Summary

When a summer flood washes a young mongoose out of its burrow, an English boy named Teddy finds him and brings him to his parents. They warm and dry the mongoose, who revives and then climbs up onto the young boy’s collar. The mongoose is called Rikki-tikki-tavi because of the chittering sounds he makes, and he is a brave and curious animal. The English family feeds him and then he goes to explore the house. By night, he sleeps beside Teddy, although Teddy’s mother is worried that Rikki-tikki-tavi will bite the child. Teddy’s father reassures her that the mongoose will actually keep Teddy safe from snakes.

The next day, Rikki-tikki-tavi goes to explore the garden of the bungalow, which is in an area of India called Segowlee where many military families live. In the garden, Rikki-tikki-tavi hears Darzee the tailor-bird and his wife crying because one of their babies fell out of the nest and was eaten by the cobra, Nag. Nag appears and claims that the god Brahm put a mark upon his hood in thanks for keeping the sun off of him while he slept. Rikki-tikki-tavi is frightened at first, but since a mongoose’s natural instinct is to eat snakes, he is not afraid for long. Nag tries to distract Rikki-tikki-tavi while his wife, Nagaina, sneaks up behind him, but the tailor-birds warn him before she strikes. Rikki-tikki-tavi evades the strike and grows angry, but does not think that he can fight two snakes at once and so goes away to think.

The narrator claims that natural history books state that a mongoose can cure itself of poison by eating herbs, but that this is not true and a mongoose’s only defense is its quickness in dodging snakebites. When Teddy comes to pet Rikki-tikki-tavi, Karait, a venomous brown snake, tries to bite Teddy. Rikki-tikki-tavi manages to bite Karait first and paralyze him, and then Teddy’s father beats the snake with a stick. Rikki-tikki-tavi decides not to feast after this fight, since he wants to stay limber for his fight with Nag and Nagaina. He finds the muskrat, Chuchundra, by the walls of the house that night, who warns him that the cobras are creeping into the bathroom.

Rikki-tikki-tavi overhears Nag and Nagaina planning as they creep into Teddy’s parents’ bathroom. They want to empty the house of people so that the mongoose will leave and they will be the dominant species in the garden and have a safe place to hatch their eggs. Nag plans to kill Teddy’s father by ambushing him, hiding in a water jar until morning. Rikki-tikki-tavi is worried because he will have to break Nag’s back on the first strike, or else the cobra will bite him and kill him. He jumps into the jar, but Nag begins to shake and beats him against the side of the bath. Rikki-tikki-tavi holds on and Teddy’s father wakes up at the noise and shoots the cobra with his shot-gun. The humans are grateful to Rikki-tikki-tavi for saving them and he goes to sleep with Teddy, sore and stiff from the fight.

In the morning, Rikki-tikki-tavi goes to see Darzee, the tailor-bird, who is happily singing that Nag is dead and praising the mongoose’s heroism. Rikki-tikki-tavi is annoyed because he still has to fight Nagaina and find her eggs. Darzee tells Rikki-tikki-tavi that he can find her eggs in the melon-bed by the ball, and Darzee’s wife helps to lure Nagaina away from the nest by pretending to have a broken wing and getting chased across the garden. Rikki-tikki-tavi begins to destroy the cobra eggs, but Darzee’s wife warns him that Nagaina has gone to the veranda to exact revenge on the family for killing Nag. Taking the last surviving egg with him, Rikki-tikki-tavi rushes to the veranda and sees the family at the breakfast table, with Nagaina poised to bite Teddy on the leg. Rikki-tikki-tavi manages to distract Nagaina from Teddy by threatening the last egg, giving Teddy’s father time to pull him up and onto the table.

Nagaina manages to grab her last egg and flees into the garden, while the mongoose chases her. She goes down a rat hole to hide, and Rikki-tikki-tavi grabs her tail and follows her, knowing that if the hole became wide enough for her to turn, she could strike and kill him. Darzee begins to sing a mournful song, believing that the mongoose is dead, but Rikki-tikki-tavi emerges having killed Nagaina. He rests and then has the birds announce to the rest of the garden that the cobras are gone. When he returns to the family, they feed him and thank him, and Rikki-tikki-tavi continues to protect the garden.

“Rikki-tikki-tavi” Analysis

“Rikki-tikki-tavi” demonstrates that kindness will be repaid and imagines a positive and mutually beneficial relationship between humans and animals. It therefore adopts the morally didactic tone of a fable. Indeed, this story may be based upon a legend from the Panchatantra, an Indian collection of animal fables written in Sanskrit around 200 BCE. One of the fables warns against hasty action, relating the story of a woman who raises a mongoose alongside her baby, but upon seeing the mongoose with a bloody mouth, kills the animal because she believes it has bitten the child. However, when she goes to the cradle, she discovers the corpse of a snake beside it and regrets her hasty assumption. Kipling’s version of this tale portrays a more successful version of human and animal relationships, showing that the English family wisely trusts the mongoose not to harm them. Because Teddy and his family care for Rikki-tikki-tavi after he has been washed away from home in a flood, he repays them by defending their bungalow from snakes. Kindness is framed as a civilizing process. This is crystallized through Teddy’s mother exclamation as she watches Rikki-tikki-tavi jump onto Teddy’s shoulders: “[A]nd that’s a wild creature! I suppose he’s so tame because we’ve been kind to him” (177). The care that the humans show toward the mongoose tames him, making him their ally against the snakes.

Similarly, the garden of the bungalow is shown to be half-wild and half-tame. The Christian Bible depicts earthly paradise as a garden over which Adam and Eve are given, but they are forced to leave it due to a snake. Symbolically, Rikki-tikki-tavi’s defense of the garden is therefore a morally significant act. Kipling describes the garden as “only half cultivated, with bushes as big as summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and thickets of high grass” (180). The description of the garden as “half-cultivated,” featuring both native Indian species like lime and bamboo as well as European plants like the Marshal Neil roses, implies that the garden allegorically represents the state of India as Kipling sees it. Like the bungalow garden, India is under the control of the British, but the wild and native species still pose a danger to their rule.

The dialogue between Nag and Nagaina indicates that the battle to control the garden represents a conflict of authority between the English family and their mongoose ally and other crueler tyrannical rulers. The cobras posit that Rikki-tikki-tavi will leave if they kill the family who feeds him, saying, “[S]o long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon-bed hatch (as they may to-morrow), our children will need room and quiet” (195). By describing themselves as “kings and queens,” Nag and Nagaina are established as rivals to British rule over India. However, the story portrays the British as more deserving of their authority because the English family shows kindness and care toward the animals who embody more positive traits such as bravery and curiosity. While Nag and Nagaina eat the young of the birds who live in the garden, Rikki-tikki-tavi represents an equally fierce but more gentle protector. This story reflects the colonial ideology of the British Raj and works to suggest that the British Empire has the right to rule over a foreign nation because of the kindness it claims to show toward the “well-behaved” inhabitants of that nation.