Monday, May 4, 2020

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling


Source of book: I own this.

One of the benefits of having nowhere to go in the evenings is that I have had a chance to read more to my youngest two kids, who were too young to remember certain books I read the older ones years back.

In this case, my wife read the older kids Just So Stories, so I got to do it this time. I rather enjoyed these stories as a kid, and my youngest in particular (my “best beloved,” as the story has it…) loved them. 

As usual, with anything Kipling, you have to know going in that there will be some outdated and offensive stereotypes of non-whites. It was, so to speak, in the waters of Colonialist Britain, so it shows up in many works of the era. In the case of Kipling, his role as an apologist for the Empire, particularly in the case of India and Africa, unfortunately shows through even in the books for children. However, one thing I noticed having read them both as a kid and as an adult is that some of the stereotypes have become so outdated that they no longer register with modern readers. (A great example of this is in The Jungle Book, where the monkeys were originally understood to be a caricature of Indians. But the dog whistles don’t register with American children of the 21st Century: the monkeys are just...monkeys. Likewise, in Just So Stories, I noticed a few things that were bothersome purely because of my study as an adult of Indian independence that went over my head as a kid. Perhaps Brits would see them, but I didn’t even bother to explain them to the kids - the references didn’t register, and the animals to them are just animals, not metaphors. 

One thing I did have to explain is that in a particular story, there is a rock with a “magic symbol” on it. That symbol is a swastika. Naturally, that is a bit jarring to see in a book these days. But it isn’t a mystery. Just So Stories originated as bedtime stories from Kipling to his daughter, and was published in 1902. The swastika as a symbol goes back centuries in Asia, and is a symbol of divinity and good fortune in a number of religions. Kipling presumably understood it as a token of good luck and a talisman of sorts - which is how the West viewed it until the 1930s, when Hitler wrecked a perfectly good symbol. (That’s how I feel about the Racist Far-right’s appropriation of the Gadsden Flag, by the way. Nasty evil people co-opting good things and ruining them for the rest of us.) So Kipling clearly intended nothing sinister by the swastika. 


One of Kipling's original illustrations - which are in our edition.



So, with that initial caveat, these stories are rather delightful. Many are “how this animal developed this trait” stories. How the Camel got his hump. (He kept saying Humph! until a Djinn turned that Humph into its physical manifestation.) How the elephant got his trunk. And that sort of thing. These are pretty fun, of course, and are best if read with enough suspense and humor. The two chapters on the invention of writing and the (English) alphabet are pretty funny too, even if they have a bit of the neolithic stereotypes going. (Sassy little girls, though, are timeless.) 

My favorite, however, has always been The Cat that Walked By Himself. There are plenty of perfectly academic explanations for the process of domestication, but I still think Kipling’s holds water. After all, anyone who knows and loves cats knows that they surely had a say in things, which is why cats aren’t fully domestic - they still walk by themselves, so to speak. This story is also great for the repetitions of consonance that make it fun to say aloud. 

And he went back through the Wet Wild Woods, waving his wild tail, and walking by his wild lone.

“But I am still the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.” 

The book is full of fun stuff like this, with a perfect amount of repetition and rhythm to make it memorable to younger listeners. And also fun to read. There are some tongue twisters, but once it starts to flow, it sounds so good to say. 

Kipling was a big part of my formative years - I read and re-read a number of his books. And every once in a while, I run across someone who shares my love for his least-known and under-appreciated book, Puck of Pook’s Hill

If you want to read my thoughts on other Kipling books I have read to the kids in the last 10 years, here you go:


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