Rudyard Kipling is a literary giant. He was the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and is still the youngest to receive it at 41. He was offered the Poets’ Laureateship and knighthood several times (he refused them more than once): only when Kipling died and had no opinion to the contrary were his devotees able to honor his literary giftedness by placing his ashes in the poets corner, along with Chaucer, C.S. Lewis, Edmund Spencer and poets of a similar caliber. Yet one of Kipling’s best known works is a children's book offering completely false and absurd explanations for how the elephant got his trunk or the camel his hump. Though many may either dismiss or enjoy this book only because it is entertaining, the Just So Stories do much more than entertain: it is precisely because these stories are false and absurd that they are worth much more than simply ease of reading. Kipling’s Just So Stories by describing things that could never have happened reveal the magic of reality.
Section 1: Detour into the Stories’ Origin
Kipling briefly described the origin of the Just So Stories:
“In the evening there were stories meant to put Effie to sleep, and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence. So at last they came to be like charms, all three of them—the whale tale, the camel tale, and the rhinoceros tale.
Kipling’s daughter Effie died of pneumonia in 1899 at the age of six, and in her memory Kipling created nine other stories that were also told just so, ranging all across the british empire: from the High Veldt to the deserts of Australia to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees. He added, too, stories of the First Things: stories about the first Cat who walked by himself, or Pau Amma the monstrous crab who played with the sea and got the first man’s feet wet. The stories are not only told for Effie but also include Effie in them: the poem following How the Alphabet was Made has this line about the main characters Taffy and her father Tegumai:
But as the Faithful years return
And hearts unwounded sing again,
Comes Taffy dancing through the fern
To lead the surrey spring again
And later in the poem Kipling writes this:
For far- O very far behind
So far she cannot call to him
Comes Tegumai alone to find
The daughter that was all to him
Not much about Taffy and Tegumai’s previous adventures match the sombre tone or describe Taffy as the cyclical herald of spring. That is why I think this poem about Tegumai and Taffy is also about Kipling and Effie (even both daughters' names and ages are similar). This most likely means that Taffy and Teguamai in the rest of the adventures are not dissimilar to the author and his daughter’s relationship and antics. Kipling put pen to paper and rewrote Effie’s favorite stories and created new ones—and I’m sure he wrote all of them just so.
Section 2: Kipling’s Genius
The first thing someone should notice in these stories is Kipling’s writing style. He is a poet, and there are lines of poetry at the end of every story, but the stories themselves are full of prose poetry:
Nqong called Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—always hungry, dusty in the sunshine, and showed him Kangaroo. Nqong said, 'Dingo! Wake up, Dingo! Do you see that gentleman dancing on an ashpit? He wants to be popular and very truly run after. Dingo, make him so!'
Up jumped Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—and said, 'What, that cat-rabbit?'
Off ran Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—hungry, grinning like a coal-scuttle,—ran after Kangaroo.
Off went the proud Kangaroo on his four little legs like a bunny.
This, O Beloved of mine, ends the first part of the tale!
He ran through the desert; he ran through the mountains; he ran through the salt-pans; he ran through the reed-beds; he ran through the blue gums; he ran through the spinifex; he ran till his front legs ached.
He had to (Just So Stories, the Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo)!
Kipling throughout all of his stories plays with rhythm, rhymes, and repetition: even the names of characters in the stories like slow solid tortoise and stickly prickly hedgehog have a strong rhythm to them, and every story has a line or phrase that is repeated like “so that was all right best beloved, do you see?” All the rhythm, rhyme and repetition results in a narrative style so satisfying with such a strong flavor that if you read much of Kipling’s writing you will start thinking and talking like him, O best beloved.
Section 3: The Point of It All
The second thing someone should notice about the Just So Stories is their value as stories: even if the stories are told brilliantly, it is important to know what purpose the stories themselves have. Of course, what is most important is not Kipling’s explanation of why an animal has a particular feature: the point of the just so stories is not to give a natural (or even reasonable) explanation for anything: how the whale got his throat is purposefully outlandish and expecting a reasonable explanation for an animal’s particular feature will bring you confusion and disappointment. What is most important is also not the moral of the story, though it is sometimes there. If you read the just so stories as allegories that bring a moral truth (like don’t lie, or be kind), you will be confused when you read the conclusion to How the Elephant Got His Trunk, because the young elephant comes back home and spanks all of his aunts and uncles with his brand new trunk: you will also be confused when the proud cat who walks by himself at the end of his story is still proud and still walks by himself. What is important is each story has a very strong sense of poetic justice. All children have an intuition for poetic justice (have you ever heard the words “that's not fair”?), and so do the Just So stories. The whale for his veracity can only swallow shrimp, the lazy camel is punished with a perpetual burden, the young elephant gets back at his elders for their ‘cessant spanking, and so on. Each story has strong poetic justice which crafts very satisfying stories children will love.
Most importantly however, Kipling’s stories re-enchant reality. These stories do not tell you how elephants got their trunk, but they do tell you something true about the elephant. Chesterton once quipped something relevant: “it is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't” (Orthodoxy). Rhinos and armadillos and whales are just as fantastical, just as unrealistic as griffins: the only difference in category between griffins and elephants is the fact that elephants really exist. If we did not know that such creatures existed and only heard them described, we would assume elephants and kangaroos and the like could only exist in a fantastic, magical world. That assumption, however, is perfectly true: they do exist in a magical world, in a world made of lava stampeding through space at 67,000 miles per hour for centuries—a world where creatures grow food for us out of starlight and thin air—a world that was simply spoken into existence by a Word. This world we populate is magical, we have simply forgotten. Kipling’s stories about a rhino's skin, or a kangaroo's legs are not there to tell you truly how they got one or the other, but simply to remind you how unrealistic, how absurd, how magical these features really are. And that is worth many false explanations.
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