The Jungle Book
– an extract
This is an early part of Kipling's The Jungle Book
when the wolf pack first finds the baby Mowgli.
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley, he heard the dry,
angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing
and does not care if all the jungle knows it.
“Shere Khan — the fool!” said Father Wolf. “To begin a night’s
hunting with that noise!”
“Hush. It is neither bullock nor deer he hunts tonight,” said
Mother Wolf, “It is Man.”
“Man!” said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. “Ha! Are
there not enough beetles and frogs that he must eat Man, and on
our ground too!”
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 hundreds of men with gongs 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
unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too — and it is true —
that man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated “Aargh!” of
the tiger’scharge.
Then there was a howl — an untigerish howl — from Shere
Khan. “He has missed,” said Mother Wolf. “What is it?”
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan muttering
andmumbling savagely, as he tumbled about in the scrub.
“The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s
camp-fire, and has burned his feet,” said Father Wolf, with a
grunt.
“Something is coming,” said Mother Wolf, twitching one car.
Get ready.”
The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, 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 he
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!” he snapped. “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
thing 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?” said Mother Wolf “I have never seen one.
Bring it here.”
A wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary,
mouth 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.
“How little! How naked, and how bold!” said Mother Wolf
softly. The baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get
close to the warm hide. “Ah! He is taking his meal with the
others. And so this is a man’s cub. Now, was there ever 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,” said Father Wolf. “He is altogether without
hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he
looks up and is not afraid.”
1.
Choose the best word or group of words to fit the passage and put
a ring around your choice.
The story begins with Shere Khan setting out to hunt. Father Wolf
knows that the tiger has not caught anything so far because of his
a)
1 mark
Father Wolf thinks that making a noise while hunting is
b)
1 mark
Mother Wolf senses that Shere Khan is hunting
c)
1 mark
Another noise rips through the jungle. This time, Shere Khan lets out
a loud howl of
d)
1 mark
as he crashes into
e)
1 mark
The wolves become worried when they hear the nearby bushes
rustle.
In his alarm, Father Wolf
f)
1 mark
Instead of being under attack, they find a human baby. They are filled
with
g)
1 mark
2.
In The Jungle Book, Shere Khan is an unlikeable and dangerous
character.
Give three things that support this view.
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3 marks
3.
Tick true or false to show whether the following are laws of the
jungle in The Jungle Book.
Animals are allowed to...
true
false
hunt other animals.
hunt humans if they are hungry.
hunt humans for training cubs.
hunt humans for sport.
hunt humans anywhere in the jungle
2 marks
4.
Look at the paragraph beginning: The Law of the Jungle...
The animals of the jungle avoid hunting Man because it is:
•
harmful to all the animals of the jungle
•
harmful to the man-eater.
Explain how it is harmful in the table below.
harmful to all the animals
harmful to the man-eater
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2 marks
5.
Look at the paragraph beginning: The bushes rustled... .
What does checked in mid-spring mean?
Tick one.
The wolf looks to see where
he is going.
The wolf stops half way
through his jump.
The wolf gets ready to jump.
The wolf wants to see how
high he can jump.
1 mark
6.
In the paragraph beginning: The bushes rustled... , the writer uses
other words meaning jump.
Find and copy two other words.
1. ......................................................................
2. ......................................................................
1 mark
7.
The writer uses the expression mouth an egg when describing how
wolves behave.
What does this tell us about how a wolf carries its young?
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1 mark
8.
Use this paragraph to answer all of question 8.
"How little! How naked, and – how bold!" said Mother Wolf, softly. The
baby was pushing his way between the cubs to get close to the warm
hide. "Ah! He is taking his meal with the others. And so this is a man's
cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a man's cub among
her children?"
a)
From this short paragraph you can tell that:
Tick one.
The baby was really a
wolf cub.
The baby was about one
year old.
Mother Wolf was fierce.
Mother Wolf wanted to keep the
baby.
1 mark
b)
Underline the word that shows that Mother Wolf would be
proud to have a human baby in her family.
1 mark
c)
Find and copy one word that shows that Mother Wolf did not
want to alarm the baby.
1 mark
d)
How can you tell from this paragraph that the baby is not
frightened?
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1 mark
9
a)
What is the most tense moment in the story?
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1 mark
b)
What happens to bring the tension to an end?
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1 mark
10.
Think about everything you have read.
What impression of wolves does the writer give?
Explain your answer as fully as you can.
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3 marks