2023 book club⤴

june book

Cover of The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

classic · adventure | <200 pages

Embark on an imaginative adventure with Mowgli, a young orphaned boy raised by animals in the jungles of India. In a collection of stories about courage and survival, Mowgli must learn the laws of the jungle to defeat the tiger Shere-Khan. Featuring lively characters and a captivating journey of self-discovery, The Jungle Book is an enduring classic for young readers.

Read The Jungle Book at Project Gutenberg.

discussion

next club meeting date: June 30 @ 7pm

discussion questions:
  1. Most readers are familiar with Mowgli's story due to Disney's animated Jungle Book film. Did you have any expectations for the other stories? What did you think of them?
  2. Do you think this collection has a central theme and, if so, what is it?
  3. What are the conflicts in The Jungle Book? What types of conflict (physical, moral, intellectual, or emotional) did you notice in this collection?
  4. How essential is the setting to the stories? Could the story have taken place anywhere else?
  5. What do you think of the way the text imagines animals' lives: their social structures, customs, personalities, and values?
  6. How does the text support the idea of Social Darwinism? Consider how certain groups of animals are described as more intelligent, noble, etc. (Social Darwinist theories generally hold that the powerful in society are innately better than the weak and that success is proof of their superiority. Kipling and other Westerners espoused this theory, which they found particularly useful in justifying colonialism.)

survey

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