The Themes Raised and Lessons Learned in The Jungle Book

Assignment #3 Insight

The Jungle book is one of the finest classics of the time, first the book, then the cartoon and now the movie has reached the top of the table of 2016. You may have read the book, watched the cartoon or the movie but the things you missed were the inspirations hidden in it. Reading the book or watching the cartoon didn’t made me realize of the inspirations as I was naïve at that time but after watching the movie twice, I then realized how the movie gained its popularity. There are a lot of lessons that are life learning. We should probably begin with it.

The first lesson learned from The Jungle book is don’t aspire to be someone that you are not. From a very young age all of us as a student are encouraged and guided to do many different things. Our teachers suggested us to take up engineering due to our abilities in Math but may be our parents had different hopes from us like we should end up being a businessman or a doctor. In life we may want to fit in with some people so badly that we try to change ourselves or try to convince those people that we all are the same. All of us has that desire to be able to connect to each other and to fit in with the people of our own tribe. However many of us try to fit in the group by pretending that we are someone that we are not.

Throughout the movie, Mowgli was on the search for his tribe whether that was the elephants, wolves, the bear or the Man. Part of the challenges of his search was trying to have the abilities or skills that an animal possess rather than a human. Mowgli was able to succeed one he stopped pretending being the animal and embraced being himself by which he was able to defeat the tiger Shere Khan.

Your true friends will always have your back. It doesn’t matter how many people you meet in a lifetime, there will always just be a few ones who will always support you no matter what. Mowgli had several loved ones who did their absolute best to protect him and help him throughout his journey. In the movie Mowgli was threatened by Sher Khan that he would find him and kill once the water truce have ended. Bagheera, the panther was there for Mowgli when he needed him the most which was when Shere Khan attacked Mowgli before getting to the man’s village. We should always appreciate these types of people in our life. These are the people that will not abandon their friend, they genuinely wants the best for us, they will protect and support us and will steer clear the people who seem untrustworthy or bad situations. In life our goal is to find these types of friends whom we can trust and count on how bad the situation is.

Be careful who you trust. In the movie Kaa, the snake desires to eat Mowgli luring him in promising to keep in safe, she hypnotizes him and revels that how he came to live in the jungle when Shere Khan killed his father as they were travelling among the villages and Bagheera found him. During her story telling she attempts to devour him but Baloo spots and rescues Mowgli from her coil denying her of her meal. In the real world there may be people in life who seem trustworthy, who actually end up being snakes in the end. Some of these people may try to get close to you right away or promise you things that seem too good to be true. Be wary of someone who seems too interested in getting close to you right away. This may come in the form of someone trying to sale you something that feels too good to be true. We should be looking out for the red flags. Often times detecting someone who is untrustworthy is as easy as being aware of red flags and looking out for the warning signs by understanding the situation what they want in return.

Face your fears, the most important lesson learnt from The Jungle book. Mowgli faced his fear of the tiger Shere Khan. He built up the courage to save his friend Baloo by tying a burning tree branch to Shere Khan’s tail. This caused Shere Khan to run away in fear and Mowgli emerged successful. Like Mowgli we sometimes need to avoid our fears. This can help us to lead a mediocre life. When we face our fears we empower ourselves and gain confidence with each fear we conquer.

I myself had this fear of being ridiculed at the gym for being skinny, by which I didn’t attended one. My friend motivated me and explained the benefits of working out at the gym and that everyone at the gym was once a beginner too. Persuaded by a friend help me to face my fear of getting ridiculed at the gym and now I works out 4 days a week at a gym and love every minute of it.

‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

As you can see missing out such inspirational piece of elements in a 2 hour movie is so much easy, it’s only possible to get these inspiration if you only choose to focus on it. Insights are never easy to be gained, I myself watched this movie twice to get the inspiration out of it. It just that Insights are everywhere you have to just be ready to pick them up from the events. So basically getting insight from somewhere is your own responsibility.