Copperfield in the Jungle by Ruskin Bond | Characters, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘Copperfield in Jungle’ is a short story written by Ruskin Bond that was first published in his short stories collection titled ‘Tigers For Ever’ in 1996. This is an autobiographical story in which Ruskin Bond expressed one of his own experiences during his childhood. The title of the story mentions David Copperfield, one of the famous titular characters created by Charles Dickens in his book David Copperfield, and shows the influence of Dickens over Ruskin Bond.

Like his other stories such as The Tiger in the Tunnel, No Room for a Leopard, Dust on the Mountains, and others, Copperfield in the Jungle is a short story that explores the relationship of humans, animals, and the environment and ecology. The story is set staged against the Terai forests of the Siwaliks where Bond spent the better years of his childhood. The story highlights the lack of empathy of adult humans against animals and how adults no longer provide role models for our children. Models of right thinking and right behavior. Children are making them aware of their misdeeds.

Characters of Copperfield in the Jungle

The main character of the story is a twelve-year-old child who remains unnamed but one can guess he is Ruskin Bond himself during his childhood. While the child belongs to a family of hunters, he is much inspired by his grandfather who doesn’t like killing innocent animals for fun. Rather, the child loves reading literature. Uncle Henry is the child’s hunter uncle who takes him on an expedition. While Uncle Henry and his friends claim to be great hunters, they hardly succeed in any big hunt. They only managed to shoot two miserable, underweight wild fowls at the end of the week and they blamed it on the bad weather.

Summary of Copperfield in The Jungle:

The twelve-year-old narrator remembers his grandfather, who had a great influence on him. He says that like his grandfather, he too loves reading books and despises the idea of killing animals for fun during hunting expeditions. However, he says that his uncle Henry enjoys such wild sports.

The young boy could never get interested in the hunting expeditions of his Uncle Henry and some of his sporting friends. Perhaps he had inherited this from his grandfather who never understood the pleasure some people obtained from killing the creatures of our forests. Killing for food –most animals die that could be justified to an extent but killing just for the fun of it could not be justified or understood.
Even at the tender age of twelve, the bo disliked anything to do with shikar or hunting. He also found it terribly boring. To explain his point of view, the boy narrates one of his experiences.

Uncle Henry and some of his sporting friends once took him on a shikar expedition into the Terai forests of the Siwalik hills. The prospect of spending one whole week in the jungle with several adults with guns only filled him with dismay. They would all the time be thinking and talking of hunting a tiger or an elephant and he did not all the look forward to it. So, on their second day in the jungle, he managed to be left behind at the rest house. And in a corner of the back verandah of that old bungalow, he discovered a shelf of books –some thirty volumes, obviously untouched for many years. Much too young to know what was good and what was not. He would have read anything and everything with pleasure. However much to his delight the bookshelf contained among others. P.G. Wodehouse’s “Love Among The Chickens”, M.R. James’s ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,’ Edward Hamilton Aikten’s “A Naturalist on the Prowl” and Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield. This chance acquaintance with M.Micawber and family, Aunt Betsy Trowood, Mr.Dick, Peggoty, and many other characters in Dickens’s novel seemed to set him off on the road to literature.
At the end of the week, the four men guns could only see a spotted deer and shoot two miserable, underweight wild fowls. Sitting in the rest house with his treasure of books Ruskin Bond saw not only the spotted deer crossing the open clearing in front of the bungalow but also a large leopard had done it only to help itself to a meal, it did not disturb the young Ruskin beyond a point and he returned to his reading. The hunting party however refused to believe this attributing this bit of information to his overactive imagination under the immediate influence of Dickens’s vivid portrayal of Master Copperfield. The boy brings the half–finished novel with him.

Thus, the expedition proved to be futile for the hunter Uncle Henry but for the boy, it was a treasure hunt that he won in the jungle successfully.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!