100 Things Blogging Challenge: #1 - Bagheera
My topic: 100 Literary Characters Who Have Affected Me
I was initially going to blog about a particular Shakespearean character, but realized I will be better off waiting, since I will doubtless have many more thoughts after portraying that character in one of my class finals.
So I thought back to early childhood: Who was the earliest character I was particularly fascinated by? ...
My earliest contact with Bagheera was either in the old Chuck Jones cartoon "Mowgli's Brothers" or in a story of the same name contained in an old storybook of my mother's. The anthologized story took the first chapter or so of Kipling's classic The Jungle Book and capitulated it to me it in likely abridged form.
I don't remember which came first. Both might have come when I was around 6 or 7. I loved the cartoon and the video was thus periodically rented from the corner store. I would also read the story and stare at the lavish illustration in the book, a glossy Mowgli and Bagheera, both long and lean and lounging on a large, exotic tree branch.
Children remember things differently. This illustration may not have been as grand as I recall. The animation in the cartoon was, from my largely fruitless attempts to research it online, not nearly as grand as I recall. The voiceovers in the cartoon, likely, were also not as profound as I remember.
But here is what my much younger mind perceived, then: Bagheera was an enviable and admirable character--elegant, wise, well-spoken and fair-voiced, charismatic. This is an ideal archetype that has stayed with me all my life.
Snippet of Bagheera from The Jungle Book sourced from: Project Gutenberg.
"O Akela, and ye the Free People," he purred, "I have no right in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. And the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price. Am I right? [...] To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo's word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept the man's cub according to the Law. Is it difficult?"
Later I saw the Disney animated film version, which presents Bagheera as a rather uptight and anxious fellow (another archetype that has resonated with me). When I at last read The Jungle Book and its lesser-known sequel The Second Jungle Book at the age of 13--several poems from which I can still recite from memory--, I was surprised to find that Bagheera had quite the soft spot. In a reversal of the now well-known Disney versions (or rather, pre-Disney-reversal), Baloo was much harder on young Mowgli than Bagheera was. Nonetheless, the character's knowledge and elegance continued to haunt me throughout my reading of those volumes.
So, here's to you, Bagheera. Though I would have to do more research to figure out whether I in any way approve of your creator now, my little-recalled thoughts of you were and remain fond.