UNIT 3
Play
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book was written by Rudyard Kipling. The book has attracted audiences of all ages for its plot structure and
characters. Children especially enjoy this story as it deals with the early childhood
of a boy in the midst of wild animals in the forest.
Characters
Father Wolf, Mother Wolf,
Tabaqui (the Jackal), Shere Khan (the Tiger), Man’s Cub (Mowgli), Wolf’s Cubs,
Narrator
Scene I
The scene opens in the Seeonee Hills. It’s seven o’clock, a sunny evening,
in the middle of the jungle. The Moon is yet to rise and with no stars to brighten
the sky, utter darkness surrounds the forest.
:Father Wolf wakes up from his day’s
rest, releases and spreads out his paws one after the other to make himself ready
for the hunt. Mother Wolf with her big grey nose drops her four tumbling, squealing
cubs into the mouth of the cave where they all live.
: Augrh! It is time to hunt again. (Moves
down to spring downhill, where he notices a little shadow with a bushy tail at the
entrance and whines).
: Good Luck go with you, O chief of the
Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may
never forget the hungry in this world.
: (In a stiff tone) Enter, then,
and look, but there is no food here.
: For a wolf it may not be enough, but for so mean a person as
myself a dry bone is a good feast.
All thanks for this good meal (licking his lips).
(Looks at the Father and Mother Wolf who seem to be uncomfortable)
How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! And so young
too!
(Sits still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had
made. In a spiteful tone he says) Shere
Khan, the Big one has shifted his hunting grounds. He has told me that he will hunt
among these hills for the next moon.
: Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River,
twenty miles away.
: (Angrily) He has no right to come here!
By the law of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarters without due warning.
If he comes here, he will frighten every head of game within ten miles and I – I
have to kill for two, these days.
: (Quietly)His mother did not call him Lungri (the Lame One)
for nothing. He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why he has only
killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, and he has
come here to make our villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he
is far away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set on fire. Indeed,
we are grateful to Shere Khan!
: (Quietly) I go. You can hear Shere Khan below in the forest.
Scene II
: Father Wolf listened and below in the valley that ran down a little
river he heard the dry, angry, whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does
not care if all the jungle knows it.
: The fool! To begin a night’s work with that noise! Does he think
that our bucks are like his fast Waingunga bullocks?
: Hush! It is neither bullock nor he hunts tonight. It is Man.
:
The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr
that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders
woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into
the very mouth of the tiger.
: Man! (Showing all his white teeth.) Hah! Are there not enough beetles and Man, and on our ground too!
Scene III
:The law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without
a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children
how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe.
The real reason for this is that Man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival
of men on elephants with guns and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle
suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest
and most defenceless of all living things, and it is true – that Man-eaters become
mangy and lose their teeth. The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated
howl.
: Aaarrh!
: Then there was a howl – an untigerish howl – from Shere Khan.
: He has missed.
: What is it? [Runs out a few paces and hears Shere Khan muttering
and mumbling as he tumbles about in the scrub.] The fool has had no more sense than
to jump at a woodcutter’s campfire, and has burned his feet. [With a grunt]. Tabaqui
is with him.
: Something is coming uphill. [Twitching one ear] Get ready!
: The bushes rustled a little in the forest and Father Wolf dropped
with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watching,
you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world – the wolf checked in
mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then
tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot up straight into the air for
four or five feet, landing almost where he left ground.
: Man! (Snaps) A Man’s cub. Look!
: Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood
a naked baby who could just walk – as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever
came to a wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face and laughed.
: Is that a Man’s cub? I have never seen one. Bring it here.
: A wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can if
necessary, eat an egg without breaking it, and though Father Wolf’s jaws closed
right on the child’s back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down
among the cubs.
: (In a soft tone) How little! How naked, and – how bold!
: The baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close
to the warm hide.
: So this is a man’s cub. Now, was there
a wolf that could boast of a Man’s cub among her children?
: I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our
Pack or in my time. But see, he looks up and is not afraid.
: The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave, for Shere
Khan’s great square head and shoulders were thrust into the entrance. Tabaqui behind
him, was squeaking.
: My Lord, my Lord, it went in here!
: Shere Khan does us great honour, (angrily) what does he need?
: My quarry. A Man’s cub went this way. Its parents have run
off. Give it to me.
: Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter’s
campfire, as Father Wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his burned feet.
But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the cave was too narrow for a tiger to come
in by. Even where he was, Shere Khan’s shoulders and forepaws were cramped for want
of room as a Man’s cub would be if he tried to fight in a barrel.
: The Wolves are a free people. They take orders from the Head
of the Pack, and not from any striped cattle-killer. The Man’s cub is ours – to
hunt if we choose.
: What talk is this of choosing? It is I, Shere Khan, who speaks!
:
The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother
Wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green
moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.
: And it is I, Raksha, ‘The Demon’, who
answers. The Man’s cub is mine. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with
the Pack; and in the end, he shall hunt you!
: Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days
when he won Mother Wolf in a fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in
the Pack and was not called 'The Demon' for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might
have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew
that where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to the
death. So backed out of the cave mouth growling, and when he was clear he shouted.
: Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will
say to this fostering of man-cubs. The man-cub is mine and will come to me in the
end!
Scene IV
:
Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the cubs, and Father Wolf said to
her gravely.
:
Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the Pack. Will you
still keep him, Mother?
: Keep
him!(She gasps) He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not
afraid! Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already. And that lame
butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the
villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him? AssuredlyI
will keep him.
Lie still,
little frog. O you Mowgli – for Mowgli the Frog I will call you – the time will
come when you will hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted you.
The story does not end here. It continues with many more episodes
such as the acceptance of Mowgli by the Pack of Wolves, the friendship between Bagheera
and Mowgli, Mowghli’s adventurous trips in the jungle with Baloo (the bear), the
fight between Mowgli and the Monkey’s gang etc. Eventually Mowgli is forced to leave
the jungle and he goes to live in the village. Later, he decides to return to the
jungle and live there.
Related Topics
Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, DMCA Policy and Compliant
Copyright © 2018-2024 BrainKart.com; All Rights Reserved. Developed by Therithal info, Chennai.