Analyse af 'The Gentlemen of the Jungle'

The story is about an elephant asking his friend for shelter of his trunk in the man’s hut, but the elephant takes over the hut and suddenly the man is standing outside in the heavy rain. They start a discussion about the hut and the lion The King of the jungle appears to get peace and order, but the elephant is a high minister of the jungle so the lion listens to the elephants arguments and commands his minister to make a Commission of Enquiry to go through the case. The other ministers of the jungle come into the commission so the man protests, but they tell him that no one from his side is educated enough. The man does not get a fair verdict by the commission, so he builds a new hut, but it is also taken over by a jungle lords and the same thing happens several times. Then the man decides to build a bigger hut and all the jungle lords come rushing in and they start fighting about the hut. The man set the hut on fire and it burns down with all the jungle lords.

The genre in the story is fiction and a fable where the animal got human personality and they can speak and act like humans. This is seen in the text “the lion came along roaring and said in a loud voice: “Don’t you know that I am the King of the jungle!” (s.1 l.21-22). The lion has both the behaviour as an animal and a human because the lion can both roar and speak at the same time. The story has also a beginning and ending as a typically fairy tale with the famous words “Once upon a time “(s.1 l.1) and “and lived happily ever after” (s.4 l.20-21). So the reader thinks it is a fairy tale for children, but it is about the British Empire taking the land in Africa.