A Survey Of The Human World From Natural And Traditional Perspectives

John Rawls, the American giant on liberalism, once used Curtain of Ignorance to be the hypothesis for an unbiased judgment and the accomplishment of social justice, i.e. people were put in a primitive situation without knowing either their social classifications or prefixed social identities. Unarguably, it is a very ideal hypothesis; therefore it has been under attack of being too ideal to be utilized in sociology. However, the conception is quite useful in the writing of this thesis. The two Jungle Books are the first contact between Kipling and the author of the thesis. In fact, the author performed the reading under the Curtain of Ignorance, simply fascinated by the thrilling plots, the master of language usage, and the keen insight into human nature presented in the two books, while without any knowledge of the writer himself, neither his great fame as a winner of Nobel Prize for literature, nor his controversial notorieties in the history of English literature. Not surprisingly, since the Anglo-Saxon has been enjoying its great fame for the genuine knowledge of the human world and the human nature, describing a real world in diversified forms has been a tradition in the British scholars. In this case, the works from this nation are undoubtedly full of realistic sharpness, while sparkling with idealism and optimism in the light that the Anglo-Saxon also has been called a mild nation. So is true with Kipling's works.The two Jungle Books are two of the most popular works from Kipling, which consist of two volumes, including fifteen short stories, most of which are serial stories about the adventures of an Indian wolf-boy called Mowgli. There are also some other independent short stories unconnected to the Mowgli stories in the two books. Traditionally, the two Jungle Books have been classified in children's books, well-known to the readers, particularly to the children, in the western world. The two Jungle Books are an integrated project, a myth of reality indeed behind the fascinating plots and narrations, for it is an excellent anatomy to human world and human nature from a pure natural creature's perspectives. It is also an ode for idealism, for Kipling not only used them to convey the sharp realism which can be dated back to the ancient Hellenic time, but also used them to carry on the humanitarian care in idealism of his own nation down from the Enlightenment era, in which Kipling revealed his longing for a Kantian Morality.As a winner of Nobel Prize for literature and meanwhile a highly controversial figure in English literature, Kipling has been a hot topic for foreign critics. Compared with that, the studies in this field seem quite backward in China, for which historical subterfuges can be an explanation. Moreover, some premises have oriented the studies of the analysis both on Kipling's thoughts and his works. The thesis endeavours to offer a relatively new and comprehensive analysis on the two Jungle Books from new perspectives, with Kipling's Law of the Jungle as the core and the two major schools--realism and idealism--in humanitarian thoughts as the thread.The thesis consists of three parts: the first part discusses the two metaphors lying in Kipling's jungle world by tracing their theoretical base in Hellenic time and the enlightenment era in Britain, thereby, to show Kipling's keen insight to the real world; the second part emphasises the idealistic passion presented by Kipling in virtue of his stories in the two Jungle Books, which, of course, partly comes from Kipling's personalities, moreover, from the humanitarian cares in Anglo-Saxon heritage; the third part starts with postcolonialism theories, combining with a key story, The Miracle of Purun Bhagat in The Second Jungle Book, to analyze Kipling's complex on the East-West reconciliation and his understanding to the eastern culture.In essence, the writing of the thesis is a cross-disciplinary endeavour. It is a combined survey of the texts and the history of humanitarian thoughts, with the refined theories as the main argumentations while the details in the texts as the supportive materials, in the hope to penetrate the outlook of the two Jungle Books into the deep soul concealed in the two great works, as well as into the soul of the individual called Kipling; thereby presenting the two Jungle Books and their author, both of whom have secured a lasting charm through the test of time, to the readers who are not familiar to them yet.