Tikki Voluntary

As Mario Puzo once said, “The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.” In the story Rikki Tikki Tavi, Rikki was loyal to his new family because they gained his trust by caring for him. This was only possible because the family was loyal to him and did not just leave him there to die or go away. The theme of Rikki Tikki Tavi is loyalty can make you do dangerous things for the people you care about.

Rikki Tikki is a loyal character in this story. In one case, Rikki Tikki fought Karait to protect Teddy (para 33). This proves that Rikki Tikki is loyal because he risked his own life to save Teddy’s life. This proves the theme because Rikki put his own life in danger to save Teddy only because he was
loyal. Furthermore, Rikki Tikki jumped on Nag, bit his head, and stayed on even when Nag shook Rikki to get him off (para 58). This conveys that Rikki Tikki is loyal because Rikki put his family's protection before his own. This character trait helps prove the thesis because it shows that Rikki Tikki did dangerous things to protect his family by killing Nag. For the reasons above, Rikki Tikki is loyal to the people he cares about.

Nagaina, another character in the story, is caring. In one case, Nagaina forgets about killing Rikki Tikki’s family just to try to protect her egg (para 91). This shows that Nagaina is caring because she cares about her egg more than taking revenge. Nagaina is like Rikki Tikki because Rikki cares about his family more than himself like Nagaina. Nagaina’s quality proves the thesis because she is cares about her family more than her own life. Furthermore, Nagaina left the fight with Rikki Tikki midway so that she could take her egg to the safest spot possible (para 96). This implies that Nagaina is caring because she forgot about taking revenge on the family to protect her egg. Nagaina is like Rikki Tikki because Rikki Tikki also put his own life in danger to protect his family like Nagaina. Nagaina’s character proves the thesis because she knew she would be in danger if she ran away but did it anyway to save her egg. To sum up, Nagaina is another main character in this story who is caring towards her loved ones.

The author, Rudyard Kipling, uses personification in this story to help prove that if someone cares about and is loyal to somebody, they will do everything they can to help that person, even the situation is dangerous.
To illustrate, Rikki Tikki fought Karait to protect Teddy even though it was dangerous (para 33). This proves that Kipling uses personification to prove the reason above because he gives human characteristics to Rikki Tikki by saying that Rikki Tikki had fought Karait to protect Teddy, but it is not possible in real life for a mongoose to kill a snake only to protect someone which proves that this is personification. This piece of personification demonstrates the theme because it proves that if someone cares about someone, they will face dangerous situations for the sake of their loved one. Furthermore, another example of personification would be when Nagaina had stopped what she was doing and yelled at Rikki Tikki to give her her egg back (para 91) Thus, this is an example of personification because Nagaina is ordering Rikki to give her the egg back whereas animals can not actually order others around. This piece of personification proves the theme because Nagaina only turned around to protect her egg from Rikki Tikki which means that the only reason she turned around was because she cared for her egg enough to forget about taking revenge. In conclusion, Rudyard Kipling uses the form of figurative language called personification to justify that if a person cares about someone, they will do everything they can to protect that person from any
harm.

This story was about the fact that loyalty can make anyone do dangerous things for their loved ones and the people they care about. In this story, Rikki Tikki fights with many dangerous animals so that his family does not get hurt in any way. Also, Nagaina tries to murder Rikki’s family so that Rikki would not be a threat to her family. In the end, Rikki Tikki kills Nagaina and her family and concludes that if anything threatened his family again, he would take care of it. The theme of this story applies to everyone in that every single person has the power to protect their loved ones if they care about them.