Fear in The Jungle Book and The Graveyard Book

Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book use fear in noticeably different ways. Where Kipling’s character Mowgli is able to use fear in order to gain power and dominance over other members of his jungle, Gaiman’s character Nobody is often taught that fear is better as a last resort, if it has to be used at all. These two approaches show the change in the views of fear between the years that the two books were published, from a useful way to gain authority to a negative method used only by those who have nothing else to offer.

Mowgli is often rewarded for his ability to inspire fear in other characters. He was able to show power in “Mowgli’s Brothers” by waving a stick of fire “among the cowering wolves” (21). As a result of their fear, he was able to order the wolves not to kill Akela, and had the power over them that he needed in order to stay safe and make his own decisions. Fear was an acceptable method of gaining power over the wolves that wanted to cast him out. An entire story, “How Fear Came,” tells of how the tiger brought fear into the jungle, and that fear took the form of a man, and now a tiger can only hunt once a month without fear (157). Even Tabaqui, the small jackal, gains power when he forgets his own fear; he will occasionally go mad, “and then he forgets that he was afraid of anyone” (5). When this happens, every animal is afraid of him, even the tiger; without his fear, the jackal becomes powerful. Fear is a weakness in Kipling’s novel, and being able to create it is an enormous power. It is an asset to be able to scare someone else.

Nobody, however, learns that fear is not a very useful weapon. When he and Scarlett encounter the Sleer, they are able to escape precisely because they are not afraid of it (56). Fear is an unreliable weapon at best, and it often results in punishment or regret. Mo and Nick, two of Nobody’s classmates, use fear in order to scare classmates; they are shown to be the antagonists of their story, and Bod only uses fear against them as a last resort (183, 208). Silas uses fear as a weapon, as well, but he is shown to regret it: “I was the monster, then” (303). The ability to scare is not a demonstration of power so much as it is a last resort or a regrettable action.