Age Recommendation: All ages
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
The last feature film that Walt Disney supervised before his death, The Jungle Book (1967) takes Rudyard Kipling’s ambiguous and somewhat forbidding collection of animal tales and translates it into a relevant, if not perfectly congruent, fable. Mowgli, Shere Khan, Baloo, Bagheera, and all of our familiar favorites are sourced from Kipling’s book, but their original exploits unfurled with a notably darker cast. What Disney does preserve – and what stands on its own as a worthwhile experience for families – is a focus on friendship and formation. The Jungle Book knows what Christian communities have modeled for centuries: that no one can attain the fullness of faith in isolation.
We need friends and mentors growing up – good friends, bad friends, and hopefully narratives like The Jungle Book that can begin (however subtly) to teach us the difference between the two. What I love about The Jungle Book is that its fairly casual relationship with plot gives way to episodes where lessons about friendship stand out. And we’ve got a great child protagonist, with Mowgli, who is “trying on” these various relationships and identities in the way that young people often do.
The Big Lesson: Rightly Ordered Love
St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote extensively on the idea that love and friendship – like everything in our lives – must ultimately be oriented toward God, which means that to truly love another person is to help orient them toward God… which, of course, means advocating for their ultimate good even when it creates conflict or makes us uncomfortable. This shows up a lot in contemporary discussions of speaking the truth in love, but it also connects to Christ’s statement that the greatest love is to lay down our lives for our friends. We must be willing to be misunderstood or even disliked in helping to form our loved ones and point them to Christ – and this is the heart of the narrative arc for The Jungle Book’s two pillar characters, Bagheera and Baloo.
To the extent that The Jungle Book has a plot, it’s set up between competing imperatives to “get Mowgli to the man village” – where he can grow into maturity and find purpose – and protect him from the tiger Shere Khan, who hates men and wants to devour him (sound familiar?). Baloo and Bagheera are Mowgli’s primary mentors tasked with what we would think of as “covering” – offering protection and instruction while he is being formed. Each of them goes through their own journey of discovering how to give Mowgli what he really needs. And he meets plenty of other connections, for good and for ill, along the way.
I thought it might be fun to walk through The Jungle Book’s cast of characters and examine what they each have to teach us on our spiritual journeys. At the end of the day, this film is a fun, breezy watch, but there’s more than might first appear for those with eyes to see.
Influences in The Jungle Book
Each of the characters and communities Mowgli meets offer dynamics that are probably familiar to most of us, and that our kids will come to recognize as they venture out into the world.
The Wolves
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” (Ephesians 6: 1-3)
Family of origin. They raise Mowgli from his earliest days as a baby who Bagheera finds abandoned by the river, and they see him through his first happy years, but the true action of The Jungle Book begins when he reaches an age where he needs to seek formation outside the family home. Your nuclear family is indispensable, but they can only do so much.
Bagheera
An elder must be blameless… he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. (Titus 1:6-9)
This prim and admittedly fussy jaguar provides Mowgli with something critical: structure. He tells him what is and isn’t appropriate and serves as healthy shelter from influences that might lead Mowgli astray. Figuratively, Bagheera could embody a positive school environment or a mentor at church. He’s willing to tell Mowgli things he doesn’t want to hear, and his counterpoint is Baloo, who helps Mowgli retain a childlike spirit even as he matures. Notably, he delivers a verbatim Christian thesis in the film, rattling off John 15:13 in an uncertain moment when it seems a noble Baloo has met his end.
Baloo
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:25-26)
Baloo the bear needs basically no introduction, as his anthem “The Bare Necessities” has had a shelf life far beyond the initial popularity of The Jungle Book and it’s perhaps the major sequence associated with the film today. But what he gives Mowgli with this silly and carefree song is something that Christ is continually trying to give us as well: an untroubled and childlike dependence on the Father and all the many ways he provides for us as we go about His work. In receiving our bare necessities – and sometimes, it’s no more than that, our daily bread – we learn to thank Him and to grow ever more into childlike faith even as we put the ways of childhood behind us. Baloo learns to temper his marvelous joyful attitude with genuine boundaries and guidance, and in the end he sheds tears as he helps deliver Mowgli to his man village destiny alongside compatriot Bagheera.
Kaa
After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. (Judges 16:19)
One of the most notable things about Kaa is that he exerts maximum influence over Mowgli when he has gotten outside of Bagheera’s protective care. Without sound counsel (or physical intervention!) to stand in the way, the python’s hypnosis immobilizes Mowgli so that he’s inches away from becoming lunch. When children are left unprotected in the world, what influences inevitably draw them in? Most likely, it’s the siren song of social media, and all the worldly peer pressures that exist in that space.
The Elephants
He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” (Mark 7:6-8)
Colonel Hathi and his pompous band are honestly a lovable bunch, but metaphorically there’s a bit more nuance to what they seem to be teaching us. They’re a battalion without any discernable war to fight, carrying on an endless military march in the absence of a real enemy. In other words, they’re an organization unhooked from any real sense of purpose. They have let go of the Spirit and are proceeding on mere human traditions. Sometimes in the course of life we will run into these people: either those who are in the grip of legalism, or those who might offer us a sense of purpose that is nevertheless wrong for us. It’s a part of development to learn to eschew empty organizational belonging. Keep in step with the Spirit, practice discernment, and stay connected to trees that produce Kingdom fruit.
King Louie
When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. (Acts 8:18-21)
King Louie the orangutan is a tricky one. We certainly can’t ignore that he has probably the best song in the film, in terms of pure swing virtuosity, but we also have to look at his cautionary tale. Louie is representative of influence peddlers who want the favor of God without the submission and formation. Maybe this is a lesson that real-life Mowgli would learn later, but it certainly bears receiving a nugget at this early age. Make a special note that what Louie wants is the power of fire – echoing, perhaps, the power of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit. But the “firepower” of the Holy Spirit often only rests insofar as we’ve submitted to the refiner’s fire – this is access that can’t be shortcutted or bought.
The Vultures
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity. (Proverbs 17:17)
I have to say that I find the vultures among the most entertaining of The Jungle Book’s cast, because aside from the fact that they look vaguely like The Beatles, they’re among the most recognizable in terms of circles that you’ve probably been exposed to at some point in your life. Their main characteristics are that they seem lost outside of pleasurable social activity and most conversations revolve around where they want to go on a (presumably weekend?) night. The funniest thing about the vultures is that their catchy and kind of sweet song about friendship gets blown to bits as soon as Shere Khan arrives. For all their big talk about “friends to the bitter end,” the moment someone in their group (Mowgli!) faces genuine danger or strife, they’re nowhere to be found. I probably don’t need to spend any more words on this motley crew. We’ve been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt, and now we need to caution our kids about these folks.
I think that’s everyone! The only character I didn’t dive into was Shere Khan. I think the most important thing to know about him is that, like King Louie, he also has a special relationship with fire, but it’s one marked by fear and ultimate defeat. Shere Khan may stalk around the periphery of The Jungle Book as a literal roaring tiger seeking someone to devour, but as Mowgli has man’s “firepower” (and we have the power of the Holy Spirit), he is a defeated foe.
And finally, what tips Mowgli over into embracing maturity is his relationship with The Girl. Pretty, gentle, and drawing water by the river where Mowgli first arrived, her image provides the coaxing that he needs to take his place in the man village once and for all. His journey of formation hints at his next (and consummate) adventure: to protect, nurture, and provide himself.
I've loved this movie since I was a kid. Excellent analysis!
In addition to these themes, the movie has some of the best slapstick comedy I’ve ever seen.