“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, by Rudyard Kipling, tells the story of a courageous, brave yet loving mongoose who puts a human family’s life above his own. After the first read I thought the story was well written and enjoyed reading it. It was interesting how the family had their own dialogue as well as the animals communicating between themselves. When Rikki-Tikki-Tavi kills Nag, the antagonist snake, he does not rest and is actually mad at Darzee the bird for singing about it. He says that they must keep fighting until Nagaina and all her offspring are dead so they cannot hurt the family. It is interesting how the mongoose is the protector of the family. This prompted me to lookup the spirit of the mongoose and see if there are any urban legends about…show more content… The way the author describes their actions makes it extremely believable as well. It seems that the author is able to mix actual details about the way these animals hunt and behave into their personalities and dialogue as well. I believe the moral of the story here is to never let your guard down. Over all after reading it the first time I enjoyed the story and was interested in the authors use of personification and imagery. What really jumped out at me through all of this, however, was the authors choice of animals. As I re-read the story, I found my self wondering why she chose a mongoose, a king cobra, a tailor-bird, and a musk rat. The story easily could have been about a plethora of other types of animals so why did she choose these. To figure this out I would have to research some of the attributes of these…show more content… I knew it couldn’t be a very large animal, but it had to be something big enough to be as courageous as it was. I was wrong. A mongoose looks like a squirrel with light brown fur and a long tail. When thinking of an animal that kills snakes, this is not the first image that comes to my head. I think this is one of the first lessons the story has to offer and that is the lesson of not judging a book by its cover. Clearly Rikki-Tikki is not a very frightening creature because the family is willing to bring him in the house and nurse him back to health, they even let him sleep in bed with their son. But Rikki-Tikki is also out killing cobras who are trying to get into the house and kill the family. Throughout the story the author tells how Rikki-Tikki likes to sleep on the little boys pillow right by his head. In addition to this, Rikki-Tikki also likes to jump behind snakes and bite their necks until they are dead. There is a huge contrast which is evident when Kipling says, “…but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor” (Kipling2). On the outside, Rikki-Tikki seams like a cute and loving house pet while on the inside his eyes can become “red and hot” as he kills Nag and Nagaina. There are actually two ways in which Rikki-Tikki shows that he is not what he may seem on the outside. The first is when
