Episode 287: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, “Tiger, Tiger”

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast Summary: Episode 287 - The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, “Tiger, Tiger”

Released on July 29, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 287 of The Literary Life Podcast, hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, along with guest Cindy Rollins, delve deep into Rudyard Kipling's classic tale, "Tiger, Tiger," one of the stories from The Jungle Book. This episode marks a significant exploration of Kipling's work, offering fresh perspectives and illuminating previously unappreciated facets of his storytelling.

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Redeeming Rudyard Kipling

Angelina opens the discussion by expressing a newfound appreciation for Kipling, acknowledging that previous perceptions of his work were often overshadowed by critiques. She shares, "You guys have redeemed Kipling for me. I have told you," reflecting a transformation in her literary stance (16:53).

Thomas Banks adds, "I think Kipling has some romantic moods," suggesting that while Kipling may not traditionally fit into the romantic category, his narratives exhibit romantic qualities, particularly in their mythic and adventurous elements (21:16).

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Kipling’s Literary Style: Romanticism and Mythic Elements

The trio explores Kipling's unique blend of romanticism with a mythic framework. Thomas notes, "He has some stories that we classify him... I think he has a romantic streak," highlighting Kipling's ability to infuse his tales with a sense of grandeur and mythic significance without fully aligning with romantic literary standards (21:16).

Cindy Rollins concurs, describing Kipling as "a modern romantic," who marries masculine adventure with softer, fanciful elements to create enduring and enchanting stories (22:37).

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Analysis of "Tiger, Tiger"

Plot Overview

The discussion centers on "Tiger, Tiger," where Mowgli, the man-cub, grapples with his identity between the jungle and human society. Angelina narrates key plot points, emphasizing Mowgli's alienation from both worlds:

“So he's a man of two worlds, but he doesn't really belong in either one, which is why, at the end, he's completely exiled and says, I'm just gonna go on my own.” (55:19)

Themes Explored

1. Identity and Belonging: Mowgli's struggle reflects the universal quest for identity, torn between his innate connection to the wild and the societal expectations of the human village.

2. Law and Order: The episode delves into the contrasting laws governing the jungle ("law of the jungle") versus the village ("law of money"). Angelina points out, "The wolf pack, we keep hearing, it's the law of the jungle," juxtaposed with the villagers' materialistic values (31:02).

3. Mythic Quest: The narrative follows Mowgli's hero's journey archetype, where he is tasked with defeating the formidable Shere Khan. Thomas likens this to classic quests like "The Sword in the Stone" and notes, "Mowgli has his mythic quest," aligning his journey with timeless heroic narratives (41:52).

Notable Quotes

• Angelina Stanford at 36:55: "He did not know his own strength in the least. In the jungle, he knew he was weak compared with the beast. But in the village, people said that he was as strong as a bull."

• Thomas Banks at 46:15: "Mowgli is presented as having heroic potential, but also his rough edges are real rough edges and, you know, potentially dangerous."

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Mythic and Archetypal Elements

The hosts identify several mythic structures within "Tiger, Tiger":

• The Hero's Duality: Mowgli embodies the archetype of the hero caught between two realms, akin to figures like Moses or Christ, who bridge divine and human worlds.

• Symbolic Battles: The confrontation with Shere Khan transcends a mere physical fight, representing the internal and external struggles of maintaining one's identity and values amidst conflicting forces.

• Sacrificial Motifs: Angelina highlights the sacrificial language, noting, "he has to tease his shoulders so he was pushing them off... a sacrificial death," underscoring the deeper symbolic sacrifices characters make within the narrative (44:50).

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Conflict Between Nature and Civilization

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the tension between the untamed wild and structured human society:

• Mowgli’s Frustration with Civilization: Angelina remarks, "he finds some of them frustrating and others kind of silly," illustrating Mowgli’s struggle to reconcile his wilderness upbringing with human customs (33:04).

• Villagers’ Superstitions vs. Mowgli’s Practicality: The villagers' reliance on superstition clashes with Mowgli's rational understanding of nature and survival, leading to misunderstandings and conflicts.

Cindy Rollins reflects on how these themes resonate with modern readers, emphasizing the timeless relevance of Kipling's exploration of societal norms and individual agency.

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Character Dynamics and Development

• Mowgli: Portrayed as a complex protagonist who navigates between his instincts and learned behaviors, showcasing growth yet retaining inherent wildness.

• Shere Khan: Symbolizes the oppressive force of rigid authority and superstition, ultimately being outsmarted by Mowgli, representing intelligence and adaptability triumphing over brute strength (42:21).

• Bagheera and Akela: Serve as mentors and representations of balance between jungle law and human logic, guiding Mowgli through his challenges.

Notable Interactions

• Mowgli’s Clashing with the Villagers: Mowgli's interactions with figures like Buldeo reveal the deep-seated prejudices and the villagers' inability to understand his unique position, culminating in his ultimate exile (49:44).

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Conclusion and Reflections

The episode culminates with the hosts reflecting on the profound mythic structures within "Tiger, Tiger." Angelina expresses a deepened appreciation for Kipling’s ability to weave complex themes into engaging narratives:

“There is a lot of mythic language there, this lawlessness that's the thread is this the lawlessness and the potential for lawlessness in all of our hearts... stories will save the world.” (60:16)

Thomas agrees, highlighting the delicate balance between civilization and chaos, underscoring Kipling's foresight in portraying the fragility of societal structures:

“Civilization, law, order... is always a very fragile and delicate thing. And it needs immense vigilance always to preserve it because something is threatening it from outside or perhaps even from inside.” (61:09)

The hosts conclude by affirming the enduring relevance of Kipling’s work and their renewed admiration for his storytelling prowess.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Literary Life Podcast offers a rich, nuanced examination of Rudyard Kipling's "Tiger, Tiger," revealing the depth and complexity of his writing. Through thoughtful analysis and engaging discussion, Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, and Cindy Rollins provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the story's themes, characters, and mythic resonance, making it accessible and compelling even for those unfamiliar with the original work.

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill, and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week, we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford, and with me is my. I don't know. Are you the Bagheera to my Mowgli? Am I Mowgli?

[Thomas Banks]

I don't really think of.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I'm Mowgli.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't think there is a you character in this story.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

I try so hard to, like, somehow put us in every story, but it's just not. I don't think it's gonna work this time.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. See, we're nobody in the Jungle Book. Let's start. We'll try that again. Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We are not in the Jungle Book. I'm Angelina Stanford, and this is the mysterious Mr. Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

Hello. Hello.

[Angelina Stanford]

And we are here once again with Cindy Rollins. And, Cindy, now you might actually be in the book, though. You might be his mom.

[Cindy Rollins]

I might be the mom? Yeah. I'm always.

[Angelina Stanford]

Or the mom wolf.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. Oh, the mom wolf. Yeah. I don't want to be his mom. She seemed a little flaky to me. Well, if there was a character child and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

If there was a character in the story who just runs around crazy at the sight of all these animals and doesn't like the chaos, that would have been me.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, if there was a library in the village.

[Thomas Banks]

See, it's kind of interesting because I think if someone just met you and talked to you, superficially, for a couple minutes, they might conclude that you were an animal person. But you're not really. You dislike animals, but, like, you have your side of the street, they have theirs, and that's kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's kind of how it goes peacefully with them. Coexist. Hashtag coexist. But they don't want to coexist with me.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I. I find that, like, I really like cats outside and dogs outside, but I. I'm not an indoor pet.

[Angelina Stanford]

Kind of person you are not.

[Thomas Banks]

That's, you know, you know this about me. You've seen the effect.

[Angelina Stanford]

I have. I have.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm not at my most gracious around.

[Angelina Stanford]

Mr. Banks, would you like to get on the couch right now and just tell our listeners, just get it all out. We'll have some therapy today.

[Thomas Banks]

Sure. That's what everybody wants to hear, obviously, but he wants.

[Angelina Stanford]

They want to hear us try to force ourselves into this story before we jump in. Oh, our commonplace. I think I remember mine. But before this is what happens, I'm just going to confess to our audience here so they know what it's like. We just were chatting with Cindy for a long time before we pressed record, and I had a feeling. I was like, well, how am I going to transition into this podcast? I'm just. We're just chit. Chatting away. Y' all want to know about Cindy's new curtains? Because they're probably going to like. Yes. Yes, we do. Her new house looks amazing.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. This is turning into the Literary Life podcast and with, you know, interior decorating tips.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Okay, before we jump in, just a quick reminder about some things we've got going on. And we launched a new class today, a new webinar. So. And it is going to be taught by our new biblical history teacher and our new Fundamentals of the English language teacher. She's my TA in our fellowship program, Heather Goodman. And Heather has been really studying the works of Coleridge. And when she would talk to me about it, I said, this has got to be a webinar. This has got to be a webinar. It's too important. And for you, homeschooling. I know not everybody in our audience is a homeschool mom, but this is for you homeschool moms especially. We know we have a large Charlotte Mason influenced audience. Coleridge was a huge, huge influence on Charlotte Mason. And I think, sure, Cindy's going to agree here. I hope she's going to agree. Maybe she won't. Maybe we'll fight right here on the air. But I feel like part of the reason we really struggle to understand what Charlamason is saying is because we don't understand the tradition she's working in, that she is, like Coleridge, like MacDonald, trying to recapture a certain medieval way of living, of being, of being educated, of exploring the imagination, of nurturing your imagination. And we read her like this modern. And then we get ourselves all twisted up into knots where if we. There's been countless conversations between me and Heather in the last few months where we'd talk about Coleridge and I'd say, if people just understood that, then they wouldn't make this mistake when they try to apply various principles of Charlotte Mason. So I'm very excited to bring this to you. This is going to be August 27th, and it's called Coleridge's Imagination Restoring the Chain of Being. So let me just read to you the description here, and you guys are. You're going to get the chills. Mr. Banks, I'm so excited about this. The Enlightenment broke the chain of being, untenanting creation of its God. The medieval reason snapped through the clouds into the heavens. And 18th century England wallowed in materialistic and utilitarian philosophy, scoffing ascent, proud in their meanness, and themselves they cheat. The veil between earthly and heavenly things became an iron curtain, and material things were stripped of symbolic understanding in order to be sent to the factory for base uses. In Steps Coleridge. This webinar covers the philosophical beliefs of Coleridge's day and how he sought to reclaim a place for the discarded imagination by rebuilding the chain of being. In doing so, he returned to a transcendent view of the cosmos and humanity, taught how to read with medieval eyes, and opened up England to the philology practiced by scholars like Jacob Grimm. We'll walk through Coleridge's method, an epistemology that moves from experience through imagination to the mind of Christ and harmonizes every aspect of human nature, including religion, literature, education, and natural science. Coleridge's philosophy shaped Charlotte Mason, Sir Humphrey Davies, George MacDonald, the Inklings, and Northrop Fry. To better understand Coleridge is to better understand the language and writings of his philosophic and literary descendants. This webinar unfolds how Coleridge translated the medieval mindset for his world that we may learn with young unwounded kin, the substance from its shadow.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, that is exciting.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I'm really, really excited.

[Cindy Rollins]

Sounds beautiful. I will definitely be signing up.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes. Okay. So that's going to be August 27th. And you can find out. You can register for [e-mail] and let me also remind you that next week, our mini class on the two Alice books, Alice in Wonderland and Its Mirror through the Looking Glass, will start with Addison Hornstra. And again, let me just emphasize, north of Fry says, at the heart of all of this stuff about the literary tradition is Alice. And these books are going to be so important. So if you enjoyed her Alice in Wonderland webinar and you were one of the people demanding More, more, more. This is what you get. A full week, five sessions with Addison leading us through both of those books. And just like everything we do, it's never about the book we're talking about. It's always about the world of literature. And you're gonna learn a whole lot about how stories work. Also, if you're just a fan of the Alice books, you'll en. So you don't have to have listened to the webinar. You can just sign up for the class, or you can listen to the webinar before the class starts. And I'm really looking forward to that as well. So that is going to be August 4th through 8th. So both of those you can sign up for or get more information about at our website, HouseOfHumaneLetters.com all right, shall we start with some commonplace quotes? I'm doing the. Mr. Banks. I've got a pithy one today, so you better have a long one.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, no, no.

[Angelina Stanford]

Fire away.

[Thomas Banks]

If it's. If it's nice and short.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is nice and short. So I. I've been reading through my. I'm continuing to read through a preface to Chaucer, the D.W. robinson book that I quoted from the first episode of this series. And I. I started to pull out some quotes from that and realized every quote I liked was going to require like a 20 minute backstory to explain. I thought, I can't. I can't do that. So I will shift gears.

[Thomas Banks]

You mean it was like every other common place you've ever.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thank you. Wow. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm just saying.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ouch. Well, too close to home there, Mr. Banks. I was about to make a Jungle Book joke. I was going to say, well, now. Now you. Now you seem like, you know, she. Yeah, exactly. You're going to be exiled out of the village here in a second. I'm going to bring some red flowers in. I am Cindy Olaf. So in anticipation of the latest Corman Strike book, I am rereading all of them, and I am in book seven in preparation for book eight because these books are my comfort reads. They're genius. Mr. Banks listened to me give a full long narration yesterday about exactly what I think she's doing in these books. It's just. Just absolutely breathtaking. Anyway, I had to laugh because at one point in this book, Corman Strike says something. It was such a Mr. Banks moment. Somebody says something and he quips, should I. Hold on, let me get. I probably should have been prepared here. Let me make sure I've got it.

[Thomas Banks]

Right for the record. This is literally the first time I've ever been compared to this particular literary character.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, but you'll see. You'll see why when I tell you what he quipped. So he quipped, as Orwell says, some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, that is in one of Orwell's essays. I can't remember which one.

[Cindy Rollins]

Did he. Didn't Mr. Banks say that recently? I feel like that was his commonplace. Was it?

[Thomas Banks]

I think that has been at one point or another. Maybe not recently, but yeah, that was. That is one line of his that.

[Cindy Rollins]

He did the Orwell quote.

[Angelina Stanford]

He did the Orwell quote. Yes. It's such a good. That's such a good. So true, man. It was true when he wrote it. It's even more true today. There are some ideas so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. That that needs to be, you know, in a gilded sign in front of every universe.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, you know who also said that, and can you guess? Charlotte Mason. Yes, she did. She explains a lot about how, you know, how highly intelligent people can convince themselves of things that regular normal people can't convince themselves of. So oftentimes you find crazy theories believed by really, really smart people because their brains are so good at connecting the dots that they can. But they maybe connect, you know, missed a Mr. A dot here or there, but we could never do that. But. So we couldn't believe this silly thing. Like, I always use the example so I don't offend anybody. You know, birds. Birds aren't real. They're really machines that are watching us all the time, you know, but someone really smart can make that so real. They can even convince you when you're talking to them until you remember that little bird that you killed in, you know, fifth grade when you tried to save it. So.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, you're absolutely right.

[Thomas Banks]

Or to, to use a real example, phrenology. Yeah, that was the first one that came to mind for me.

[Angelina Stanford]

But believer, infernal. I'm not. I'm just kidding. But if I'm gonna be like, the.

[Cindy Rollins]

Full Victorian are just there.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I can't remember who it was, but there was one of the 19th century, one of the big name intellectuals who was a true believer in phrenology, actually carried, like, calipers and a measuring tape, like when he met new people to see, like, what their, I don't know, intellectual capacity.

[Angelina Stanford]

And for anyone listening at home who does not share our obsession with the Victorians and doesn't know what phrenology is, it's when you would measure the head. And it's those scenes in the.

[Thomas Banks]

It was a pseudoscience.

[Angelina Stanford]

Pseudoscience. Those scenes. There are so many. I think there's a scene in Jane Eyre like this, too. There's. You'll get a scene like that in a Victorian novel where somebody will come over and they'll comment. They might even touch the head.

[Thomas Banks]

He has a criminal shape of his head or something like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Stuff like that. Stuff like that. Because. Yeah, it was a pseudoscience that they thought they could tell something about your moral character based on the shape of your head.

[Thomas Banks]

And it was also. There were also, like, deeply racist, you know, parts of this theory as well, because, of course, like, Northern European skulls usually were taken to indicate the greatest capacity for, you know. Well, you know, high iq. And also, like, you know, moral. Moral upstandingness and all that kind of thing. So, yes, it was also not just stupid, but also hateful.

[Angelina Stanford]

There you go.

[Thomas Banks]

There you go. Everything. Everything against it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Everything against it. All right, mister. How come more pithy than Corman Strike?

[Thomas Banks]

Actually, no, it's less pithy. You and the pithiness.

[Angelina Stanford]

I never win the pithy award.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So mine is from the second volume of Olivia Manning's Balkan trilogy, the Spoilt City. And here she is describing one of the principal characters in the book who is known for his charm and his, you know, being a people person. Quote, he preferred to like people, knowing this fact was the basis of his influence over them. The sense of his will to like gave them confidence, so they liked in return.

[Angelina Stanford]

That is such a Thomas Banks quote I. I downloaded.

[Thomas Banks]

That's such a Thomas Banks quality.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

I was like, no, didn't say that at all.

[Angelina Stanford]

What'd you say, Cindy?

[Cindy Rollins]

I said I downloaded those books last time we spoke. I think a wonderful book.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, I was gonna ask you.

[Cindy Rollins]

I have them on my Kindle.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. And they have the audio on Audible, too. That's on my list.

[Cindy Rollins]

I get through all the form and strike books.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm going to try that, too. Yeah, it was. Peter Hitchens recommended those books to us on.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that's when I downloaded it, when I was listening to him. Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, you weren't on that episode, but you'll recall that when it was over, I immediately messaged you and said, I think Peter Hitchens might be your new best friend.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. But I wished I had been there. I enjoyed it.

[Angelina Stanford]

I wished you had been there, too.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was such a great episode. Yeah. You guys need to listen to that one next if you haven't and he gave us a lot of good book recommendations. All right, Cindy, what you got for us?

[Cindy Rollins]

All right, so I have two. One is a Thomas Banks one, and it moves in. It's a little. Few paragraphs after this. In this book. It's called Second Nature. It's a gardening education by Michael Poland. And it was probably written in the 80s. Like, you know, he was still writing now, and he writes a lot of good stuff. But I really enjoyed this book a lot. But here's his. His Thomas Banks quote. As might be expected, the gardens made by aesthetes are considerably more pleasing to the eye than those made by moralists.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, I believe that. Absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

No, that's. That's. That's a fine observation. I had never thought of that sort of thing before. What would a moralistic garden look like? One shudders to imagine.

[Cindy Rollins]

You know, zucchini.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Be like, full of, like. Yeah. Really nourishing root vegetables and nothing else. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's all they did was point out how good it was for you. This has a very.

[Thomas Banks]

My vitamins over there. Make sure you sample the beets. Yes and no. That's nothing against beets to people who grow them.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, the beet formers are going to come for us now. Can you imagine the Venn diagram of literary life, podcasts and beat farmers? Like, would there be a. That were really getting.

[Cindy Rollins]

You are a beet farmer. We would love to hear from you.

[Angelina Stanford]

I like beets. I like roasted beets a lot. You can send the beats to our house. Send it as a hate crime against my husband. I will eat them.

[Cindy Rollins]

I do not. I cannot eat a beat. My mother ruined me. My life was spent with red. Oh, the cane on my plate.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's not real.

[Cindy Rollins]

Because I can't even talk about it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Without not making right now.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's terrible.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, you should try roasted beets.

[Cindy Rollins]

They're very good.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right.

[Cindy Rollins]

I don't think I can give them another chance. Beets. And that word beets is just.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it's. It's an aggressive. It's too aggressive a name for a. For a vegetable, you know, Beat you over the head. I know. It's.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. Well, today we are. We're covering our last of the stories we're going to cover in this series on Rudyard Kipling's the Jungle Book. And it's Tiger, Tiger. I guess I should save this to the end, but I'll say it now and I'll say it again at the end in case I forget, but I feel like Kipling's been redeemed. You guys have redeemed him for me. I have told you.

[Thomas Banks]

Kipling.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, it's true. I have really enjoyed these and I'm feeling kind of, I'm feeling kind of, kind of spicy about it that I'm out of head, that I wasn't, I didn't read these earlier.

[Thomas Banks]

I think we chose a fairly, a fairly easy point of entry too.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, I keep thinking that this would have been a much better follow up to the Hobbit when I was in the eighth grade than Captain's Courageous.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, much, much so, yeah, yeah, I like, I mean, yeah, I like Captain's Courageous, but yeah, this is, it's Captain's Courageous is, I don't think that's the first Kipling book necessarily that I would give a child of any age to read, but yeah, I like it. But it's, you know, you sort of have to get accustomed to the Kipling atmosphere, the milieu or whatever you want.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very well. Be an amazing book. I mean, if you love it, it probably is just the context of the reading comprehension worksheets when you couldn't understand the dial up. I think we got thrown in the deep end of Kipling without any guidance.

[Cindy Rollins]

Thomas, have you read A Westward Ho?

[Thomas Banks]

I have read, though, many years ago. I like that book. Is that Charles Kingsley? Actually, yes. I think that people who like kings. Excuse, sorry, people who enjoy Kipling will probably enjoy at least that work of Charles Kingsley as well.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. He's also known for his famous the Water Babies, a book that is that one also.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Inexplicable to this day, unfortunately, that was not a book I got ever. My son and I looked at each other after we read that one and we're like, what just happened?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. But no, I, I, he tells a good adventure story. I, I enjoy Charles Kingsley. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, it's funny because while I have, I had not read the Jungle Book, I had read. I was pretty sure this is, was on your recommendation quite a few years ago, Cindy. But I did read Neil Gaiman's the Graveyard Book, which is a retelling of the Jungle Book set in a graveyard. And I enjoyed that very, very much.

[Cindy Rollins]

I did not know that was a, I love that book, the Graveyard Book, but I didn't know it was a retelling of the Jungle Book. I don't want to miss that. Now I have to read it again.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I read. Right. I read that it was a retelling of the Jungle Book and I thought, huh, I never read the Jungle book. And then I didn't, I didn't read it because I thought, oh, Kipling. No. But no, Kipling's been redeemed. No.

[Thomas Banks]

Good. Very good.

[Angelina Stanford]

I shall fight the good fight to protect Kipling from now on. Can I call him Kip to show we're buddies?

[Thomas Banks]

Sure, sure.

[Angelina Stanford]

Rudy. Rudy.

[Thomas Banks]

I know. Like, where did he get that name? I've wondered.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Daugherty.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't know. I, I, from what I know, he was always just Rudyard, like his mom.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just call him Rudyard here.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I wonder if it was a family name or something like that because that, it's so unusual. I can't think of anyone else.

[Cindy Rollins]

Those upper class British people, of course, he wasn't too upper class, but they did. They do like their nicknames.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's true.

[Thomas Banks]

That's true.

[Angelina Stanford]

Probably something.

[Thomas Banks]

Maybe in school he had an unkind.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nickname, Woodhouseian nickname that makes absolutely no sense and phonetically is embalming.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Kippy, Kips, something like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Kipper.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Kipper.

[Thomas Banks]

That would be one.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yips. Yaps. Yeah, we're going. We're getting pretty silly here today, but it could be the upper class Brits, they do like to name their firstborn son the mother's maiden last name.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. I didn't. I wasn't. I guess I've encountered that tradition amongst people I've met occasionally, but.

[Angelina Stanford]

Brideshead Revisited. That's why his name is Brideshead.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. Okay, you're right.

[Angelina Stanford]

And they call him Bridie.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Which is why I stand by Rudy. I think he was Rudy.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Some, some read your Kipling.

[Thomas Banks]

I can't argue again.

[Angelina Stanford]

Gonna write in and say, you know, what's wrong with you? Of course he wasn't Rudy. I'm just kidding. All right, and then so we start. The first thing I thought of when I opened the story and saw that it was Tiger. Tiger. I turned to you and said, hey, is this, was this influenced by William Blake's the Tiger poem? So I looked it up.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm sure that's where it's.

[Angelina Stanford]

I looked it up and it is. I did get that confirmed, so. But I wouldn't say that Kipling's a romantic.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, no. Kipling has some stories that we classify him. Yeah. I don't think of him as a romantic. I think he has maybe romantic moods. And some of his stories have kind of a romantic setting or I don't know. To use one of my favorite examples, the man who Would Be King is about to decommissioned British soldiers. They've been demobilized, and they want to make a lot of money quick, so they decide to wander off to this very isolated kingdom and get the people to believe they're gods and, you know, then rob them blind, basically. And they have all these adventures along the way. And so, yeah, it has. It has kind of. Yeah, there's, I guess, a romantic streak in Kipling, though I wouldn't necessarily classify him that way.

[Cindy Rollins]

I definitely think that he has a romantic streak, and I would say he's like a modern romantic, so to speak. Like, he's taken these two things, this modern, kind of very masculine type of writing, but then he's put it with the more. The softer romantic side in a kind of a new way. He is a very unique writer. He does sort of stand alone with the kinds of stories he tells.

[Thomas Banks]

One area, I think, where that comes out as well, is in his writings for children, whether this book or some of the others I was mentioning to you, 10 or 12 years, I think 12 years after this book comes out. So in this would be 1906, he writes a book called Puck of Pook's Hill, which is this. Yeah, okay. I was telling you about it earlier. It's two children who encounter Puck. You know, Shakespeare's Puck, though, he's. He's a little bit.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, that's a very romantic thing.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I mean, so he's a fairy, but he's not like a quite as playful and childlike as Shakespeare presents him. He's one of the old ones, he says, and he transports them back in time to different stages of England's history, back to caveman days and then forward in time to what, the Norman Conquest and in that era and, you know, Magna Carta. And. Anyway, so, yeah, I think that he had. In his writings about children, especially, I think, in the positive sense of the word, a certain fancifulness does appear. And in some of his other fiction as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

Do you think I'd like that book? That sounds right up my alley.

[Thomas Banks]

I never finished it, but I think you would. I think you would.

[Angelina Stanford]

Sounds like it's up my alley. Yeah, I can see what y' all are talking about. So, like, I think about other writers during Kipling's time, and I definitely think he's more on the romantic side because he's writing stories in nature, but he's not doing it from a naturalist perspective. He's doing it in a mythic sense. Right. So they're in nature. But like we talked about in the first episode, there's all these mythic qualities about it, as opposed to somebody like Jack London who's writing in nature. And there's a lot of the same themes, isolation, exile. But not writing it in a mythic way at all.

[Thomas Banks]

No.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I wouldn't put Kipling with the naturalist writer. So. Yeah, I think you're right.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it's a bit more romantic in some ways. I. I think he would probably. I don't think he would have willingly associated himself with that school just because the rules, the code, the laws of conduct mean so much to him. That. Yeah, I think romanticism, as we popularly conceive it, might have been sort of alien to his nature, but maybe. Yeah, sort of a romantic in spite of himself at times.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, like we said on the series we did on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, you know, Northrop Frye points out, there's really two strains of romanticism. There's revolutionary romanticism, which is what most of us think of when we think of Romantics, but there was also conservative romanticism. Coleridge would be in that. Blake would be in that. George MacDonald would be in that. The Inklings would be in that. Charlamason would be in that. Edmund Burke. Fry even puts Edmund Burke in the conservative romantic. So I. I could see Kipling in that strain.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, he's. Even though he. He's very British. Even though he didn't, you know, he has that whole India thing, but it's in British India, kind of. Although like most people that era who grew up there, he has a very homeland feel towards India.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He seems, he seems. He does have stories that are set in England. Not necessarily a whole lot of them, but that side of his writing, when he's writing about, you know, Englishmen at home, always seems. Always seems to have more visible effort in it than when he's writing about India, whether in a book that's deliberately aimed at children like this one, or in some of his Most Soldiers three and some of the other short story collections.

[Angelina Stanford]

So Blake's poem Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright, There's a lot going on with that poem. I'm not going to explicate it now, but I do want to make a few connections between that poem and this story. So it's about how a tiger is a very frightening animal and could the same God who made this have made the lamb? It's very romantic in the sense that it's looking at nature and it's seeing God's hand behind it and raising sort of theological questions, being out in Nature, which I don't think Kipling crosses the line into that. But I. I do think Kipling's writing a story about how fearful nature, the.

[Thomas Banks]

Many sidedness of it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So I mean, poor Mowgli, he. That guy can't catch a break. So the danger. I think this is why I was so impressed in the earlier stories. The danger from Mowgli. Man. Right. The danger for man comes from nature in the jungle. But in this story the danger comes from the people.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. It's kind of interesting that the people become a mob, kind of in the same way that we saw the wolves become a mob in the previous stories.

[Angelina Stanford]

And they have less of a rule of civilization than the jungle. They're more ruled by superstition.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he doesn't present them as clowns exactly. But changeable, sort of mercurial, unpredictable. And yes, like, you know, put people in a mob and the collective intelligence kind of sinks all of a sudden and unpredictably so.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I still think he's raising the story to mythic level so we can, we can get to that. So I'll just narrate because I'm the one out of the three of us who didn't know anything about these stories. So this one is going to go back again. What happened are back forward, I guess. So we had he first story, he gets expelled from the wolf pack. The second story is a flashback. And then this one, we're back to the first story. We're picking it up. Yeah. So what, what happened to him after he got exile and so he didn't go to the nearby village, he went 20 miles away to a second village and sees that the men are afraid of the people of the jungle here too. And they see him and they don't really know what to make of him.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. They think maybe he's one of them because a child had been lost.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So how common was this? That everybody's like, oh, that's probably that kid that got eaten by a tiger.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. It happens every once in a while when the kids are not careful, you know, when they're tending the cattle if they wander off on their own. The tigers are afraid of cattle, but they're not afraid of a child by himself. And you know, it's been known to happen that they could become Shere Khan's lunch.

[Cindy Rollins]

And it's kind of interesting because we, we don't know at first. Like is this. We see Kipling paints that the, the priest is kind of, you know, setting this up. So the the woman will take him. But. But we not. We're not entirely sure why we're reading the story. Is he that person? Because you think.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was very confused about that.

[Cindy Rollins]

How many kids are taken by a lame tiger, you know, that.

[Angelina Stanford]

That are exactly this boy's age and kind of look like.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. And. And yet there's clues along the way where she says, well, he looks a little different. Of course, then the. The shoe incident, where I'm like, yeah, but he's been in the jungle.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's what I was thinking. He's got hobbit feet now, but he probably wore shoes at one point.

[Cindy Rollins]

This boy never wore a shoe. Like, well, how long did he wear it before he was a baby? So.

[Angelina Stanford]

That'S what I was thinking, too. We also have that distinction again, that we saw earlier between the animal love taps and an actual attack. So they. They look at his scars and they think, oh, he's been bitten by the wolf. And he thinks, these are. These are just scratches from when we were playing around. Yeah, that. I'll tell you what a real bite is it. Isn't that? So, like, they don't even. They don't have the right framework for it. But there were so many parallel scenes in between this story and the first story, this wonderful book ends, that once again, he is being presented to a village, a tribe to be inspected, and are they going to take him or not? And then Kipling even has it. You know, he has the narrator say it. This is. This is the wolf cub thing all over again. And so we have a second hierarchy. The priest, though. Okay, so while. Here's what I noticed. While the wolf pack, we keep hearing, it's the law of the jungle. It's a law of jungle law.

[Cindy Rollins]

Jungle, right.

[Angelina Stanford]

There's a different law operating in the village, and it's the law of money.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, right. All sorts of laws that Mowgli doesn't really understand.

[Angelina Stanford]

Mostly it was money. So the reason that the priest tells the woman, I think it might be your kid is because she's married to a rich and powerful man. And then he says, don't forget to think kindly on the priest who brought your son back to you. He thinks there's going to be some financial benefit. So he's going to be the same one who's going to come out later and say, I want the thousand rupees for this hide.

[Cindy Rollins]

So I. I did look up this idea of being raised by wolves, and there was a real boy named Dinah Sanichar. Santa Car Sanichar. That Kipling was influenced by. Who was a feral boy who lived among them in. With the wolves in a cave in India. So.

[Angelina Stanford]

You're kidding.

[Cindy Rollins]

No. And I don't know that he was actually raised by wolves. They said, you know, was anyone ever raised by wolves? But possibly. But you. There are feral. There are feral children that have been in the. In the wilderness and have survived and become kind of wolf like. So anyway, Kipling was using that story as his model, so to speak.

[Angelina Stanford]

So we get a parallel adoption scene as well. Just like with the first one, the wolf mom says, well, I'll take him. This woman says, I'll take him as my son. So it's all. It's all parallel and even. Yeah. So again, I put dollar signs in my book every time I notice that. And so it's the same sort of thing here. She's rich. He goes inside and she's got a red lacquered bedstead, a great earth and grain chest with funny race patterns on it, half a dozen copper cooking pots, an image of a Hindu God in a little alcove, and on a wall, a real looking glass, such as they sell the county fair. So she's rich.

[Thomas Banks]

And I think you find in this story, again, that Mowgli adapts pretty quickly to whatever world.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's sort of thrown into the language so fast.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And he doesn't. I mean, he doesn't understand all the customs. He finds some of them frustrating and others kind of silly. But yeah, I mean, you know, he's able to herd cattle pretty quickly, and it seems that his human nature reasserts itself, you know, almost instantaneously. It's not as though. It's not as though, yeah, really, he is a wolf trapped in a child's body or something like that. And we should just let him run with the wolves and be a natural sort of Rousseau.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, it's not that. It's not that at all. But it was interesting that he can't get used to sleeping with a roof under. Over his head. That feels like a trap.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And it's interesting that her husband is so understanding of that and says, oh, well, he's okay. Just let him do that something. Let it go.

[Angelina Stanford]

And if it's such a man response, though, and then Cindy like. Or the dads is like, if he wants to camp in the backyard, let him camp in the backyard. And we're all some mom who's all worried about it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

Let's see. All right, so while he's acclimating himself to this new life, One of his brother wolves comes to tell him, Shirakan, still on the hunt for you. And this, this rivalry, this desire for vengeance, this isn't over. He wants revenge because he got his coat all burnt off. And so he went, he kind of slinked off till his coat grew back because he was too embarrassed. So they agree that he's going to continue to, to keep tabs on him. But. But there's this line. Gray brother says, thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf. I love the high language here. That the wolf. That's so well done. Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf. Men will not make thee forget, said gray brother anxiously. Never. I will always remember that I love thee and all in our cave. But also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the pack. So he's back to being a frog. He's in two worlds. By the end of the story, he will be fitting in neither one of those worlds. But this principle of, like, I'm not going to forget, it's just like at the end of the story, he doesn't, he doesn't forget his, his sense of debt to the mom. Like, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna, you know, send the wild animals to attack this village because she was kind to me, right? So he's there for the symbolically important amount of time, three months, three moon cycles. And he learned about money, which he didn't understand. And he. But. But some of the things about the law of the jungle that he learned actually come very much in, in hand. I like, I like this part. For three months after that night, Mowgli hardly ever left the village gate. He was so busy learning the ways and customs of men. First he had to wear a cloth round him, which annoyed him horribly. And then he had to learn about money, which he did not in the least understand, and about plowing, of which he did not see the use. Then the little children in the village made him very angry. Luckily, the law of the jungle had taught him to keep his temper. For in the jungle, life and food depend on keeping your temper. But when they made fun of him because he would not play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word. Only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him from picking them up and breaking them in two.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I, I like that Mowgli is presented as having heroic potential, but also his rough edges are real rough edges and, you know, potentially dangerous and, you know, may maybe Even if he didn't. If he didn't govern himself so well. Potentially murderous.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. And I like the next line from that paragraph too. He did not know his own strength in the least. In the jungle, he knew he was weak compared with the beast. But in the village, people said that he was as strong as a bull. Now that is very mythic to me, where the weakest becomes the strongest.

[Thomas Banks]

And in the next paragraph, he says that another. Another thing that he didn't understand is the caste system, because it just doesn't make sense to him. It's not. Well, it's not natural.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's not natural.

[Thomas Banks]

Unnatural in the. In the, you know, dysphemistic sense of unnatural. And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes between man and man. When the potter's donkey slipped in the clay pit, Mowgli hauled it out by the tail and helped to stack the pots for their journey to the market at Kaniwara. That was very shocking too, for the potter is a low caste man and his donkey is worse.

[Angelina Stanford]

Was he an untouchable? Like, he's not supposed to touch him? Is that what they.

[Thomas Banks]

I think remote's. I think we're meant to understand that he's a pariah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I think the Untouchables is the actual name of that cast. Right?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Pariah and untouchable. Okay. When the priest scolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey too. And the priest told Messua's husband that Mowgli had better be set to work as soon as possible. And the village headman told Mowgli that he would have to go out with the buffaloes next day and herd them while they grazed. And this is something you see in a lot of Kipling stories, the character, often a young character, once again, Harvey in Captain's Courageous, who doesn't really know his place in the world before he finds some work to do in it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yeah, okay. That connects with the C.S. lewis essay that Kipling has a high view of work. All right, so he goes out there and he's basically like a super sophisticated sheepdog.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Because he understands the animals. He's really good about this. He also finds. Takes issue with the stories that they tell because they're so. They're so superstitious in the way that they view the. The forest, the jungle. I mean, you know, they. They think that they're ghosts in the jungle. They think that Ashire Khan is lame because he is the reincarnation of a Money lender. A money lender who was lame and they think he's a ghost cub.

[Thomas Banks]

They told wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts. And Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the jungle. Till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged out of their heads. Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle was always at their door. The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops. And now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight within sight of the village gate. Mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking of, had to cover his face not to show that he was laughing. While Buldeo, the tower musket across his knees, climbed on from one wonderful story to another. And Mowgli's shoulders shook.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's where we learned that Shere Khan had taken the child of Messuah as well.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I mean, we never see him picking on anything that could really fight back in a proper way.

[Cindy Rollins]

They hinted that later, like he's only going to go after the easy. The easy prey. He's not even going to be able to escape because they. They that of that weakness.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's kind of a parallel to Shirakan himself.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Are all these tales such cobwebs and moon talk, Said Mowgli, that tire limps because he was born lame, as everyone knows. To talk of the soul of a money lender and a beast that never had the courage of true. A jackalish child's talk. So of course that they. They take that as a threat. There. Jungle brat. If thou art so wise, better bring his hide to Kaniwara. For the government has set a hundred rupees on his life. Better still, talk not when thy elders speak. So he. Here we have a challenge. Right, you go. Go kill the tiger. Yeah, that's what he wants to do.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And he like the. The. The possibility of money coming out of this doesn't really seem to interest him.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, not at all. This is about honor and an oath and a prophecy.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And it seemed like the kind of challenge that you find in a lot of coming of age stories of a mythic type. Whether it's the sword and the stone, you know, the sword that can't be pulled out by any man or. Oh, in the Persian Book of Kings, I think it is. One of the stories concerning Rustem, their great national hero is. He defeated an elephant that had been terrorizing his village when he was a boy. An elephant that no one else could defeat. So Mowgli has his task set for him. Sherekhan, this legendary tiger that everyone else is afraid of, but he knows is not really that impressive as a tiger.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Still dangerous. But, you know, he has to prove himself.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is his mythic quest that he's going to be. And it was the prophecy about him when he was a baby.

[Thomas Banks]

It's interesting, though, he doesn't fight him like an animal. No, we'll see that he uses the fact that he's a human being, he has a human intelligence, and he doesn't have, you know, the physical prowess to do so.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Very unmodern that they would this story in that way. Like he outsmarts him, but he doesn't. It's not like a scene where the two enemies fight it out tooth and claw.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Or with a sword or whatever.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, yes, you're right. And then there's the added thing that it's Shirakan's hubris, basically, that brings about his downfall because he's too full of food and he's lying there napping. He's not being smart. He's not on his garden. They're able to take advantage of that.

[Thomas Banks]

Mm.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then, of course, when the. The guy, the villager at the end is saying, well, you only were able to kill him because he was lying there sleeping. I had to laugh. And I thought, yeah, yes, he outsmarted him. That. That's literally like, this is. Why is. Why is this somehow less significant?

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. You've had your whole life to outsmart him when he was sleeping or eating.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so he gets word that Sherekhan is coming. And I love the phrase Mowgli gives when he says, okay, look, we're going to prepare a plan. He said, we need not walk into Sherekhan's mouth. And that's like ka, when they almost literally walked into his mouth, which of course, symbolically is. Is walking into the cave of death. So we're not just going to go willingly into his mouth again. That contrasts with all the babies that he's picked off, all the people he's picked up. We're not going to do that. We're going to have a plan. So Gray brother says, look, my information is very good. I got it out of Shirakan's right hand man, and I killed him afterwards.

[Cindy Rollins]

So this.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is getting very intense.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

The Jackal, he's telling all his wisdom to the kites now. I just really like the way they talk in this book. I really, really like the language a lot. He's telling all his wisdom to the kites. But he told me everything before I broke his back. Shere Khan's plan is to wait for thee at the village gate this evening, for thee and for no one else. And then Mowgli says, has he eaten? Does this meant life or death to him? Yes, he's full up. He killed the pig. And he says, all right, well, I know what to do then. And then Aquila comes back. So. So he's. He's joined by his partner here who was earlier willing to die.

[Cindy Rollins]

I love this line when Akilah comes back, because he goes, Akilah. Keela said Mowgli clapping his hands. And I just thought that was a really pretty picture of his. His love for Aquila.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, he's really happy. The other thing that I thought was so neat, I'm trying to find where I had underlined it, but all the places that he said, by the bull who died for me, you know, so that's. That's very mythic language. Like the bull was a sacrifice.

[Thomas Banks]

It seems they're always ready with oaths and proverbs. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

But the fact that the oath is being sworn on the. On the bull that. That was given for him, on the bull that Boug he uses. On the bull that bought me. Bought him with his life. So, yeah, again, very mythic language. A sacrificial. You know, I was going to say a sacrificial name. It's a sacrificial bullet. It's a. It's an. It's an. It's a sacrifice to ransom the life of someone else. A substitutionary death. That's what I'm trying to say. So they're driving the bull. Are the male buffaloes called bulls? Because I thought that was really interesting. So a bull, a bull saves him in the first life. And the bulls are going to save him in this story, too.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. He's not going to face Shuriken himself. Yeah. So he uses the two wolves to basically stampede the herd.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Sheepdogs, man.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. The two wolves ran, ladies, chain fashion, in and out of the herd, which snorted and threw up its head and separated into two clumps. In one, the cow buffalo stood with their calves in the center and glared and pawed, ready if a woman wolf could only. Would only stay still to charge down and trample the life out of him. In the other, the bulls. And the young bulls snorted and stamped. But though they looked more imposing, they were much less dangerous, for they had no calves to protect, no six Men could have divided the herd so neatly.

[Cindy Rollins]

I love that. I love that scene because I love those shows, like those Australian shows where they heard the sheep. The sheep dogs, they run on top of some. Like, to get where they need to go, the dogs actually run on top of the sheep.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, wow.

[Cindy Rollins]

I love watching those dogs work.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so he successfully gets this maneuver. He gets in position that they're going to run down on him. And then I just. Oh, let them breathe, Akilah, he said. Like, Mowgli is just so in control in this whole scene. Let them breathe, Akilah, he said, holding up his hand. They have not winded him yet. Let them breathe. I must tell Shereh Khan, who comes. We have him in the trap.

[Cindy Rollins]

But then it's like it. This goes so fast. Like, I'm just waiting for this to be.

[Angelina Stanford]

It did go so fast.

[Cindy Rollins]

Is it gonna drag it out? Like, he could have all of these shorts this out for a long time.

[Angelina Stanford]

I did listen to the audio, by the way, that you recommended.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, did you?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I listened to the audio and then I read it with my eyeballs. And when I was reading the audio, I was like, wait, I missed it. I missed it. It was that fast. I had to rewind it.

[Cindy Rollins]

I know. The first time I missed it too.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was just like the stories were.

[Thomas Banks]

Shorter than I remembered as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it happened really fast. But this is so good. He put his hands to his mouth and he shouted down the ravine. It was almost like shouting down a tunnel. And the echoes jumped from rock to rock. Okay, that means he's created another cave, like a mouth. And so Shere Khan is gonna get swallowed.

[Cindy Rollins]

Ah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I love that. After a long time, a sleepy voice says, who calls? I, Mowgli. Cattle thief. It is time to come to the council rock. Down. Hurry them down, Akilah. Down, Rama, down. That's so good. It's time to count the council. Like. Like this is your day of reckoning. And he is going to bring him back to the council rock, just his dead hide. So they. They go down, and it's the terrible charge of the buffalo herd, against which no tiger.

[Cindy Rollins]

And he doesn't say anything. Like, you don't hear Shere Khan going, no, I'll still get out of this or anything. He. I love that Mowgli says, now thou knowest like it. It's already over, you know? You know what happened?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, just a few paragraphs. And then Shere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead. And the kites were coming for him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Already, I think one of my favorite parts was the line right after that when. When Mowgli comes up. Quick, Akilah, break them up. Scatter them or they will be fighting one another. Drive them away. Akeelah ha Rama. Hi. Hi. Hi, my children. Softly now. Softly. It's all over. Just that he. That he immediately goes to caring for the flock and calms them down and keeps them from bashing each other. Which I guess at that point the charging, they would have just charged all each other to death. And he calms them down. And then, yes, Shere Khan needed more. No trampling. He was. He was that. And then he.

[Thomas Banks]

And then the men from the village come in again.

[Angelina Stanford]

First he says, we've got to work quickly and we need to get his hide so I can bring it back. And then they come while cutting it.

[Thomas Banks]

And I mean, they're, you know, find that the tiger's dead. But of course, their minds instantly turn to money. You know, how much can we get out of this? Because there was a reward on him and all that. And that's. That's another. That's one of the few languages that Mowgli doesn't speak.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, Right. And so he. I really appreciate this because I'm the same way. But I can also see in terms of the story that it's naive and it cost him. He just dismisses them. He just dismisses this as this is a stupid concern and doesn't realize the harm they're going to be able to do to him.

[Thomas Banks]

Hum, said Mowgli, half to himself as he ripped back the skin of a forepaw. So thou wilt take the hide to Kaniwara for the reward and perhaps give me one rupee. Now it is in my mind that I need the skin for my own use. Heh. Old man, take away that fire. What talk is this to the chief hunter of the village? Thy luck and the stupidity of thy buffaloes have helped thee to this kill. The tiger has just fed or he would have gone 20 miles by this time. Thou canst not even skin him properly, little beggar brat. And forsooth, I, Buldeo, must be told not to singe his whiskers. Mowgli, I will not give thee one anna of the reward. But only a very big beating leave the carcass. I had forgotten that detail. That they singe the whiskers of the tiger so they won't be haunted by just. Yeah, yeah, I like that detail.

[Cindy Rollins]

And he didn't want the tigers singed, did he? He.

[Angelina Stanford]

No. He didn't.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, he did.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now, by the bull that bought me, said Mowgli, who was trying to get at the shoulder, must I stay babbling to an old ape all noon here, Akilah, this man plagues me. So he just. He just pushes him off. And of course, they're getting more and more upset, but I love this line, too. There's an old war between this lame tiger and myself, a very old war, and I have won. Now, in terms of mythic structure, I mean, you have Mowgli as the. As the rescuer here, The, The.

[Thomas Banks]

The.

[Angelina Stanford]

The man of two worlds. That's why he's a frog. As we said before, lots of Moses echoes here, lots of Christ echoes here, the exiled one, the weak one, who's the strongest. But the idea that there's an old war here between Mowgli and this tiger and that the tiger is lame, there's just a lot of mythic elements here. I mean, not to try to go too far with, like, seeing a Christian allegory, but in terms of myth, the idea that there is a very old war between this chosen exiled figure, this mythic figure, the hero of mysterious origin, and an enemy which is powerful and dangerous and at the same time is lame in some way that. That's just a very, very old archetype. He taps into that really, really well.

[Thomas Banks]

And once again, Mowgli isn't impressed by the same things that impress the villagers or frighten them. Not just that he wasn't frightened of the tiger, but that some of the shamanism that they are immediately distracted by doesn't have. Doesn't figure with him at all, or. What does it say?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, he just keeps.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. It was sorcery, magic of the worst kind, thought Buldeo. And he wondered whether the amulet around his neck would protect him. He lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see Mowgli turn into a tiger, too.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So he thinks Mowgli's some kind of shapeshifter. Is it because the. He commands the wolf and the wolf goes. Stands on him.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So in Kipling remarks, to do Buldeo justice, It had been 10 years. If he had been 10 years younger, he would have taken his chance with Akeelah had he met the wolf in the woods. But a wolf who obeyed the orders of this boy who had private wars with man eating tigers was not a common animal.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. So then he says, I'm an old man. I did not know that thou wast anything more than a herd's boy. May I rise up and go away. Or will thy servant tear me to pieces? Go and go. Peace with thee. Only another time. Do not meddle with my game. Let it go, Aquila. So here's where he's naive because he doesn't realize the damage this guy's gonna do. Baldeo hobbled away to the village as fast as he could, looking back over his shoulder in case Mowgli could change into something terrible. So he thinks he's a shape shifter. When he got to the village, he told the tale of magic and enchantment and sorcery that made the priest looked very grave. So now they think they need to kick him out of the village because he's bad juju.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, because he's. He has bad spirits that follow him around or something like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, Sorcerer, Jungle demon. And they want him to. To go away. And then they shoot at it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Looks like they want to kill him almost. Ooh.

[Angelina Stanford]

They start shooting at him, and he. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Misses. And he shoots one of the. One of the bulls.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then they. They say, more.

[Thomas Banks]

More. Serpentary. Shouted the villagers. He can turn bullets. Buldeo, that was thy buffalo. Now, what is this? Said Mowgli, bewildered Superman. And he just pushed the bullets, and they start. They start attempting to stone him as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. And then, making it clear, Akilah says, they are not unlike the pack you've been through.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, noticed that already.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. And they're saying, go away or go away again. Yeah, go ahead.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, it's just that he says, keep count, like he knows what they care about. And he. He's. He's trying to prove, you know, he's saying, I didn't steal any. Anything from you, but just the Keep count. This is your value system. Keep count.

[Angelina Stanford]

So they're yelling at him, go away. Go away. And he says, again, last time it was because I am a man. This time it is because I'm a wolf. Let us go, Akilah. So he's doubly exiled. It is a total repeat where his foster family, his foster community ends up rejecting him because he doesn't entirely fit.

[Thomas Banks]

In because of panic, Amongst other reasons. Yeah, panic.

[Angelina Stanford]

So he's a man of two worlds, but he doesn't really belong in either one, which is why, at the end, he's completely exiled and says, I'm just gonna go on my own.

[Thomas Banks]

And Kipling. I mean, to skip ahead to the end of these. Kipling does resolve this. Originally. This is not just Mowgli being perpetually kicked from one place to another. I mean, he does Actually find a place eventually. But, yeah, it takes some of the end here.

[Angelina Stanford]

Says it grows up and gets married.

[Cindy Rollins]

But.

[Angelina Stanford]

So here comes the mom, and she says, I don't believe that you're a sorcerer, but you've got to get out of here or they're going to kill you. And so he says, look, run back. This is one of the foolish tales they tell under the big tree at dusk. I have at least paid for thy son's life. Oh, that's so good. Lots of mythic language there as well, you know. An eye for an eye. He stole your son's life. And now I have to. I, as your foster son, have taken his life.

[Thomas Banks]

And. And then he meets Bagheera again. And, yeah, he sees that he's accomplished what he had to, you know, set out to accomplish.

[Angelina Stanford]

First, let's say he says, farewell to the mother. There seems to be a bond here, I think.

[Thomas Banks]

I think so.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so he's. He's sad and says, fare you well, children of men, and thank you, Messua, that I do not come in with my wolves and hunt you up and down your street. So it's because of her and his love for her that he's not going to come in and destroy the whole village. So he leaves and he feels happy. And he says, no more sleeping in traps for me, Akilah. Let us get Shirakan skin and go away. No, we will not hurt the village, for Messua was kind to me. So he still has this code, this chivalry, Honestly. And so then he leaves. But you find out in the village that Buldeo has so embellished the story.

[Thomas Banks]

That, yeah, he has a gift for embroider stories.

[Angelina Stanford]

Stood up on his hind legs and talked like a man. George Orwell's taking notes for Animal Farm.

[Thomas Banks]

Did you know Orwell was born in India as well?

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. Eric Blair. Yeah, I had forgotten that.

[Thomas Banks]

Anyway, so, little brother, it was well done, said a deep voice in the thicket. We were lonely in the jungle without thee. And Bagheera came running to Mowgli's bare feet. They clambered up the council rock together. And Mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone where Akela used to sit, pegging it down with four silvers of bamboo. And Akela laid down on it and called the old call to the council. Look. Look. Well, O wolves. Exactly as he had called when Mowgli was first brought there.

[Angelina Stanford]

So it's a total repeat of the beginning, but I don't want to miss this. His Reunion with his mother. His. His wolf mother. I loved this. They have cast me out from the man pack. Mother. Shouted Mowgli. But I come with the hide of Shirakan to keep my word. Mother wolf walked stiffly from the cave with the cubs behind her. And her eyes glowed as she saw the skin. I told him on that day when he crammed his head and shoulders into this cave. Hunting for thy life, little frog. I told him that the hunter would be the hunted. It is well done. So she calls back to the prophecy that he's this child of destiny and the whole. The hunter would be the hunted. That's that mythic reversal, you know, that's what Aristotle describes that. That reversal in the story that Sherekhan is the hunter the whole way through. And at the end, he is the hunted.

[Cindy Rollins]

The other thing in the last paragraph here, the last two paragraphs, is this whole idea that the wolf pack, without their leader, without the boundary they needed, had kind of lost their freedom. That by throwing off all restraint, they had become unfree.

[Angelina Stanford]

And.

[Cindy Rollins]

And they wanted that back.

[Angelina Stanford]

But, you know, Mowgli's too wise now.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, I don't think they can hand. You can't handle that. The truth.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, yeah, I guess they didn't. I thought when they got rid of Akilah, they were gonna choose a new leader, but they didn't. It's like Shere Khan has so gotten in their heads. They're just lazy and.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. They have no leader. Yeah, I was surprised by that too.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it says they were kind of lawless.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

So it says they weren't free anymore.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

They say, lead us again. Oh, Akilah, lead us again, O man cub. For we be sick of this lawlessness. And we would be the free people once more. Nay, purred Bagheera, that may not be. When you are full fed, the madness may come upon you again. So it's like. Yes. I mean, you've returned to your senses for the moment. But there's always going to be that sort of streak of unpredictable lawlessness.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. He recognizes that the mob is quite fickle. But I think if you put this in the context of the story, in between. And the madness being associated with the monkeys being associated with lawlessness. And that. That ultimately puts you in. Under the power of the great serpent. I mean, again, all that mythic language there, this lawlessness that's the thread is this the lawlessness and the potential for lawlessness in all of our hearts? Like that's the threat. And it's the same thing that happened in the villagers.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Actually, Evelyn Waugh had some madness that comes over the villagers.

[Thomas Banks]

Hold on. Evelyn Waugh had a good essay about this particular side of Kipling's. Kipling's mind and his, you know, sort of creative genius. He called him the. The great poet of encirclement. And in Kipling's mind, civilization, law, order, whether it's imperial or a community of wolves or whatever, is always a very fragile and delicate thing. And it needs immense vigilance always to preserve it because something is threatening it from outside or perhaps even from inside. And the cost of surrendering one's vigilance or, you know, napping on the job, whatever form that might take is always going to be tragic. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, it's. It's one of those.

[Cindy Rollins]

You fought for your freedom, and it is yours. Eat it. Oh, wolves.

[Angelina Stanford]

No. That's so good. That's so good. This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted. Man pack and wolf pack have cast me out, said Mowgli. Now I will hunt alone in the jungle. And we will hunt with thee, said the four cubs.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's like they have made their own pack. Now. I think that's more like another pack with a leaf.

[Angelina Stanford]

Have the wolves without their leader become like the monkeys?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I think, in their way, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then if you connect that to Mowgli feeling trapped inside the house of the villagers and that he wants to be free, and then you come back over here and they, like Cindy was saying, they, in an attempt to be free, lose their freedom, and then they want to be led to be free again. There's just a lot of layers going on here.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. And I. If I can just do an advertisement for the back to school conference.

[Angelina Stanford]

Knock yourself out.

[Thomas Banks]

Fire away.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's what we're going to be talking about. Like, what is it? Does it mean to be free as a homeschooler? And what are the real boundaries that give us that freedom? And what are the one. What are the hucksters trying to sell us as? Freedom? So if you're looking for some true freedom in your homeschool, we have some great people thinking about these things, and it's going to be a good week.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm very. I'm very excited about your. Your conference. So let's look at the last little section here, because I haven't read these stories. So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that day on. But he was not always alone, because years afterwards, he became a man and married. That is a Story for grownups. So I did read that that story is not in the Jungle Book, Is that right? That story of Mowgli getting married is in a different set of stories, is that right?

[Thomas Banks]

It's in the second Jungle Book, I think, anyway. But yes, Mowgli does grow up and he becomes a scout and a tracker.

[Cindy Rollins]

I forgot about that.

[Thomas Banks]

So he gets a day job later and he joins the adult world and all that kind of thing.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I really like the other stories in this section. Moving on, like from that. They. The. None of the stories are as compelling as those first three stories. I think the most famous of the rest of the stories in this book is Rikki Tikki Tavi, which I would imagine most people are familiar with. Great cartoon of that or TV show that I watched when I was growing up that was very, very.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, I think I know the one. I think I know the one you mean. Yeah, yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

So I knew the story from that more so than from reading it. But it really, it's. It is quite a scary story, really.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, it actually.

[Cindy Rollins]

So. So Ricky. Tikki Tavi is about a mongoose and they eat the cobras that, you know, they protect the villages. And so when my kids were growing up, we read Dave Barry. And Dave Barry said if you. I really shouldn't say this because some kid listening will do this terrible thing, but Dave said, if you want to potty train a child as you're sitting him down, just say, don't worry, a big snake won't come out and bite you. And my kids, we had read that out loud. And of course, I come home one day, I go to put my son on the potty and he starts to scream bloody murder and will not go potty. And I was like, I knew immediately what had happened. And the other kids, their eyes were all big, like they knew what they had done. They had just done this terrible, terrible thing. Do not do that. Your mother will kill you kids. But anyway, this story reminds me of those deep seated fears we have. Deep seated. That works too, this mongoose of these cobras in India, you know, I'm sure that's where some of this came from. And I'm sure the serpent is, has.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nothing to do with the fact that you're from Florida, right?

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. No, not at all.

[Thomas Banks]

You don't even have to go to India for scary snakes.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, that's right. Just head down to the panhandle.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, yeah. But he has elephant stories and camel stories and, and like, what is it, seals stories in there. And they're good. They're. The language is beautiful. And all of them.

[Angelina Stanford]

Explain this to me then, because I'm confused. What is. Was. Was one set published as the Jungle Book and then later a second set of stories. And that's.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that's the second Jungle Book.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. He wrote them a few years apart and.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. All right. And do they basically have, like a narrative arc over the stories or. Not really. These three seem to have.

[Thomas Banks]

He brings in some of the same characters, you know, periodically. Again, and. But some of the stories are completely un. You know, completely independent of others.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

Like the.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just.

[Cindy Rollins]

So stories are more.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. What are those?

[Cindy Rollins]

Those are more like how the tortoise.

[Thomas Banks]

Got his shell or how the camel got its hump.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, okay. Yeah, that kind of thing.

[Thomas Banks]

Those are really good, too. Those are.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I know those are some of your favorites because I bought you an antique copy of those when we first got together.

[Thomas Banks]

Those are wonderful stories.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so now that I've got a little bit of the Kipling bug, so where should I go?

[Cindy Rollins]

There is a Jungle Book, too. I'm.

[Angelina Stanford]

People were talking.

[Thomas Banks]

There's a second jungle.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, there is.

[Thomas Banks]

People don't read nearly as a secret.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay. There it is. Okay. They kept just showing me the movie of it, and I. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Every time I Googled, I had to Google Jungle Book book. Otherwise, it just brought me to the movie.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Where should someone go? They. They've dabbled in the Jungle Book. I think.

[Thomas Banks]

Poems. I think definitely read some of his poems. I think his school story, Baa Baa Black Sheep. I think Plain Tales from the Hills. I think that's his strongest.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, you're kid playing.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So his. I think his best short story collection is. I think it's the first one he published, and he was probably 22 or 23. Plain tales from the Hills, which sort of the typical Kipling story you think of, you know, British soldiers and civil servants in India. There's a lot of those there. And one story that you must read. I can't remember what book it first appeared in, but it's been republished a lot of times, is the man who Would Be King. Definitely read that one. There's another good story of his called the Manners of Men, which is narrated by a ship captain in the first century in the middle of the Roman Empire, who describes nearly being shipwrecked while sailing to Malta with, you know, a cargo of whatever and, you know, certain passengers, amongst whom is this odd Jewish philosopher whose name was Paul or something like that. Anyway, it's the story of the Book of Acts told from the point of view of the captain and.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, interesting.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

So it's. It's. Yeah, that story is a really good one, too.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's very cool. Well, I have enjoyed this, and you guys have totally redeemed Kipling for me.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, that was. That was our object. That was. That was my mission.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, a lot of decades have been wasted here of me thinking I hated Kipling. And, Cindy, it has been so good to have you back on the podcast.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, it's been so much fun. I've enjoyed it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, thank you for making time out.

[Thomas Banks]

Of your incredibly busy scheduling and, you know, doing your own usual stuff, your own work, your own classes, your own family life.

[Angelina Stanford]

And you guys can find Cindy. I mean, of course you can find her on all the back episodes of the Lit Life podcast, but you can also find her on her other podcast, the new Mason Jar podcast, where she's out there with her partner in crime, Dawn Duran. So shout out to dawn, who has been listening to this series and told me how much she's enjoying it.

[Cindy Rollins]

She love Kipling's poems.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's what she was saying.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Her son Lucas, I asked them to bring a poem to Narration Club that we have, and he brought the most violent Kipling poem. And it was so fun. But it was a great poem.

[Angelina Stanford]

And she's going to be speaking at your conference too, right?

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. Dawn has excellent thoughts on patriotism and freedom. She's not going to be talking about that specifically. She's going to be talking about it more and more. Line with, you know, freedom and what. What are the. What. What is freedom? And how do we apply to education? But she. She has a. She's really good at. At defining those. Those things.

[Angelina Stanford]

Mm. I'm really looking forward to it. So you guys can find Cindy at her website, morningtimeforms.com where you can find out more about her podcast. Of course, you can find that anywhere with wherever you get podcasts, but you can register for her back to school conference. You can see what she's got going on her patreon and all her different things. And you can find out about Addison's Alice in Wonderland, through the Looking Glass class, as well as Heather's webinar on [e-mail] so next week, we're going to do something different. This was your idea, Mr. Banks, so hope you have brilliant things to say. We're going to do an episode on Literary Milestones. The different things that you encounter in the life of a reader and, and how, you know, how do you tackle them, what to think about them and how. And how you can mark your progress as a reader through these literary milestones and then let the record show. We can actually cover an American author on this podcast, but only if they're basically British. Then we will start a series on the Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. And I love that book.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that's. That's one. I admit that that is a book that needs to be redeemed for me, so. And I, I'm sure it will be. So I, I know it's a good book. I just didn't enjoy it when I read it in high school, so I.

[Angelina Stanford]

Read it for a class. I've only ever read it for pleasure. I've read some of her other stuff for classes, but I was on an Edith Wharton kick, oh, gosh, what, 20, 25 years ago and just read a bunch of her stuff. I really like her. She's basically a British writer.

[Thomas Banks]

Kind of like Henry James, with whom she was good friends.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. Henry James. All right, well, again, thank you, Cindy, for being here and it's good. Thank you.

[Cindy Rollins]

It was good to see everybody else. And yes, they're in the podcast sphere.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, well, we'll see you guys next time. And until then, I'll stick around to the end. Mr. Banks will have a poem for us and you can go to Literary. Oh, wait, is it patreon.com backslash literary life to see if you would be interested in supporting this podcast. Because we are 100% member supported. We do not take advertising money. So I'm not going to try to convince you to switch cell phone carriers or anything like that. And you can, you can find out about that as well as our private members only forum and some of the other things we've got going on by heading over there. Until next time, guys, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Foreign thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with Cindy at morning time for moms. D Join the conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts the new Mason Jar and the well Read poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

The Way through the woods by Rudyard Kipling they shut the road through the woods 70 years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again and now you would never know that there was once a road through the woods before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath and the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees that where the ring dove broods and the badgers roll at ease, there was once a road through the woods. Yet if you enter the woods of a summer evening, late when the night air cools on the trout ringed pools where the otter whistles his mate, they fear not men in the woods because they see so few, you will hear the beat of a horse's feet and the swish of a skirt in the dew, steadily cantering through the misty solitudes as though they perfectly knew the old lost road through the woods. But there is no road through the woods.