Kotick the Saviour: From Inferno to Paradise with Animals

Rudyard Kipling’s short story “The White Seal”, published in 1893 and incorporated into his Jungle Book a year later, is amenable to multiple interpretations. Today, the dominating approach to this story is influenced by criticism of postcolonial literature. The author offers a different insight by considering an underexploited layer of the text. He proposes to unravel the web of mythological/religious references and radical ecological demands – a web that determines the story’s originality and makes its animal protagonist, Kotick the White Seal, a bearer of hope for the readers also in our times.Book chapter in the volume: Katarzyna Marciniak, ed., Our Mythical Hope: The Ancient Myths as Medicine for Hardships of Life in Children's and Young Adults' Culture, in the series "Our Mythical Childhood", Warsaw: University of Warsaw Press, 2021, 836 pp. Open Access https://www.wuw.pl/product-eng-16830-Our-Mythical-Hope-The-Ancient-Myths-as-Medicine-for-the-Hardships-of-Life-in-Childrens-and-Young-Adults-Culture-PDF.html This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 681202 (2016–2022), Our Mythical Childhood... The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children's and Young Adults' Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges, ERC Consolidator Grant led by Katarzyna Marciniak. Project's Website: www.omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl. The publication is licensed under (CC BY 3.0 PL) (full license available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/legalcode)