 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
"The law of the jungle" (also calledjungle law) is an expression that has come to describe a scenario where "anything goes". TheOxford English Dictionary defines the Law of the Jungle as "the code of survival in jungle life, now usually with reference to the superiority of brute force or self-interest in the struggle for survival".[1]
The phrase was introduced inRudyard Kipling's 1894 workThe Jungle Book, where it described the behaviour of wolves in a pack.
In his 1894 novelThe Jungle Book,[2]Rudyard Kipling uses the term to describe an actual set of legal codes used bywolves and other animals in thejungles ofIndia. Chapter Two ofThe Second Jungle Book (1895)[3] includes apoem featuring the Law of the Jungle, as known to the wolves and taught to their offspring. It begins:
NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,
And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
In the 1994 filmThe Jungle Book, the jungle law is portrayed as a decree forbidding the killing of animals for reasons outside of one's own survival, such as gluttony or sport. The law is maintained byShere Khan, the jungle's "royal keeper" and protector, who kills anyone who has violated it.
In the 2016 Disneyremake of their 1967 animated filmThe Jungle Book, itself based on the novel, the wolves' poem is described byBaloo as a piece ofpropaganda.[4]
Definitions from Wiktionary
Texts from Wikisource | Thisvocabulary-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byadding missing information. |
