A Character Analysis Of Tikki-Tavi By Rudyard Kipling

Analysis of a literary character

The story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling tells how a courageous mongoose named Rikki-Tikki defeated two dangerous and vicious black cobras single-handily in a bungalow in India. At the beginning of the story, a human family adopted Rikki-Tikki after a summer flood washed him away from his burrow. Then while living with the family, Rikki-Tikki had discovered Nag and his wife, a pair of cobras who had been very dangerous to the animals in the garden. After the death of Nag, Nagaina's husband, whom which Rikki-Tikki had killed, Nagaina becomes angry. Pushed by wrath and vengeance from the death of her husband, she attempted to murder the son of the family, Teddy. At the end of the story, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi …show more content…
After the first failed attempt to end the life of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Nagaina planned to get rid of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by killing the human family. After overhearing the conversation, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi became very angry. Nagaina had thought that once the human family was gotten rid of; Rikki-Tikki-Tavi would also go away. Afterwards, Nagaina sent her husband to wipe off the family instead of finishing the job herself. A quotation that would support this claim of Nagaina being malevolent is, "'When the house is emptied of people...the garden will be ours again. Go in quietly, and remember that big man...is the first one to bite.'" The quote in the previous sentence verifies and confirms the character trait of Nagaina being malevolent because she wanted the family dead. The family neither had physically nor did emotional hurt the snakes. However, Nag and Nagaina still wanted to exterminate the family. This plan's purpose was so that the actual complication between Rikki and Nagaina would go away. The real battle was actually between Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Nagaina, and her husband. Nagaina wanted to kill the innocent to deal with her problem. Although the humans were not doing anything wrong to the snake, she still wanted to attack the human to perform her plan. An event even more badly in the story was that Nagaina wanted to attack the humans while they were defenseless and unarmed. …show more content…
It also tells how one brave mongoose named Rikki-Tikki had defeated her. Throughout the story, Nagaina had been mean to the other animals in the story. We understand characters in literature by paying attention to what they say, what they do, and how other characters react to them. As the story continues to develop, we could see more of Nagaina's perspectives and characteristics, which include the trait of being evil and cold-hearted. Kipling also expands Nagaina's characterization by giving her view of the story such as her thoughts and feelings. Based on all the supporting details in the previous paragraphs, Nagaina remained as an evil character throughout the entire story. I feel that even though the character has been very cold-hearted and shady in the story, surprisingly, she had been acting like a protective mom to help her offspring's futures. When the character, Nagaina, dies in the story, I feel not surprised because throughout the entire story, the snakes had been harassing and taunting all the other characters, Rikki-Tikki, the humans, and the animals in the story. I also think that the actions the snakes committed were injustice, but without their actions, the story would not have turned the path that is now. These actions assist guiding us to the author's perspective of the story. The characters connect to the theme of the