The Inevitable End(ing) and the Its Lessons

The endings of The Jungle Book and The Graveyard Book describe a common lesson of growing up, one that does not change in the hundred years between stories.  The symptoms Mowgli and Bod have are linked to a common cause, which is something a young-teenage audience would soon experience.  However, the experiences between the characters have something to say about how growing up has changed over time.

For Mowgli, his coming-of-age happens at seventeen, when "the Time of New Talk is here, because then thou [Bagheera] and the others all run away and leave me alone" (318).  The experience, which is something to which an audience of that age could relate, suggests the use of the story as a book of life lessons for young people.  As Mowgli's family becomes more distant from him, he lashes out at Bagheera and Gray Brother in his sadness and confusion (330).  His experience of growing up around creatures unlike him, while more extreme than just growing up in a more "regular" family, parallels the outside world in such a way to cause recognition among older readers as well.  With such an ending, Kipling allows the audience to make an empathetic connection, showing how Mowgli's leaving the Jungle is similar to a person just grown up leaving home.

Instead of alienation, Bod experiences a fading.  At fifteen, he loses his dominion over the Graveyard similarly to how Mowgli loses control of the animals in The Spring Running chapter (Kipling 318, Gaiman 295).  While Mowgli's experience might have been more accurate for people in his time period, Bod's gradual growing-out-of his family suggests a different story for the present day.  Gaiman suggests that to youth, the experiences and stories of one's parents seem to change less than their own, much like Bod's recollections of the Owenses, as well as every creature in the Graveyard.  Even the animals "at Bod's approach...looked up, startled then fled into the undergrowth" when "if they were feeling friendly they even let [Bod] pet them" (295).  Ultimately, Mrs. Owens' final words to Bod, "I am so proud of you, my son," show how close the family still is, unlike Mowgli's drifting from his friends in the Pack.  Because of the relationship between the living and the dead, Bod knows he will come back to his family in time, just like many people growing up today come back to their families in the end.