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Kaa
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Kaa was not a poison snake--in fact he rather despised the poison snakes as cowards--but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once lapped his huge coils round anybody there was no more to be said.
A brave heart and a courteous tongue (...) shall carry thee far through the jungle.
—Master Word of Kaa
Kaa is a fictional Indian rock python from the Mowgli stories written by Rudyard Kipling. Kaa is one of Mowgli's mentors. He, Baloo and Bagheera sing for Mowgli "The Outsong" of the jungle. First introduced in the story "Kaa's Hunting" in The Jungle Book, Kaa is a huge and powerful snake, more than a hundred years old and still in his prime. Bagheera and Baloo enlist Kaa's help to rescue Mowgli when the man-cub is captured by the Bandar-log (monkeys) and taken to an abandoned human city. Kaa breaks down the wall of the building in which Mowgli is imprisoned and uses his serpentine hypnosis to draw the monkeys toward his waiting jaws. Bagheera and Baloo are also hypnotized, but Mowgli is immune because he is human, and breaks the spell on his friends.
In The Second Jungle Book Kaa appears in the first half of the story "The King's Ankus". After he and Mowgli spend some time relaxing, bathing and wrestling, Kaa persuades Mowgli to visit a treasure chamber guarded by an old cobra beneath an ancient city. The cobra tries to kill Mowgli but its poison has dried up. Mowgli takes a jeweled item away as a souvenir, not realizing the trouble it will cause in the second half of the story, and Kaa departs.
In "Red Dog" Mowgli asks Kaa for help when his wolf pack is threatened by rampaging dhole (the red dogs of the title). Kaa goes into a trance so that he can search his century-long memory for a stratagem to defeat the dogs:
| “ | For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, while Kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg.
The light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff passes with his head, right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night. Then he felt Kaa’s back grow bigger and broader below him as the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard; “I have seen all the dead seasons,” Kaa said at last, “and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art thou still alive, Manling?” |
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With Kaa's help Mowgli tricks the dhole into attacking prematurely. Kaa takes no part in the resulting battle, but Mowgli and the wolves finally kill all the dhole, though not without grievous losses. Kaa makes his last appearance in "The Spring Running," as the teenage Mowgli reluctantly prepares to leave the jungle for the last time. "It is hard to cast the skin," he tells Mowgli, but Mowgli knows he must cast the skin of his old life in order to grow a new one.
[edit] Disney version
Trust in me... Just in me... Shut your eyes... And trust in me...
—Kaa, The Jungle Book
| Kaa | |
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Kaa as he appears in the first film |
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| First appearance | The Jungle Book |
| Created by | Rudyard Kipling |
| Voiced by | Sterling Holloway (The Jungle Book) Jim Cummings (Jungle Cubs, Disney's House of Mouse, The Jungle Book 2) |
In the 1967 Disney animation The Jungle Book, Kaa, voiced by Sterling Holloway, is markedly different from his original counterpart. Rather than being a mentor, he is a villainous, selfish and idiotic character who twice attempts to trap Mowgli in his coils in order to devour him throughout the film. He does this through the use of hypnotic eyes as opposed to the original version, in which he uses a serpentine dance to control his prey. His attempts to eat Mowgli always end in a comical failure. He is also quite cowardly, attempting to curry favor with Shere Khan whenever he is around.
While all his appearances are marked with comedy in some form or another, Kaa is, on the whole, much more menacing in the first movie than in the second, to the point where is, in fact, afraid of him when he realizes that he is angry. However, his cause for hunting Mowgli (to appease his hunger with what he perceives as easy prey) is in direct contrast with the movie's other main villain, Shere Khan, whose cause for aggression is wrath and intolerance. This contrast is most acutely shown in a scene in the first movie, where Kaa berates (to himself) Shere Khan's mock gentlemanly manner, comparing what he's doing to picking on the child, before he remembers that he aims to eat Mowgli himself.
Kaa reappears later in the film when Mowgli runs away from Baloo, who is trying to return the boy to his own kind. Kaa deceives Mowgli into trusting him and seizes the opportunity to quickly put the Man-cub back under his spell. Seductively singing "Trust in Me", he makes Mowgli relax and sleepwalk on his body, before slipping the boy back into his coils. This attempt to eat Mowgli is also foiled, ironically by Shere Khan, who is not convinced by Kaa's bluff even after searching Kaa's coils and not feeling Mowgli inside; the discraction caused by Kahn allowed Mowgli to regain consciousness and escape.
A younger version of Disney's Kaa appeared on the 1996 animated series Jungle Cubs, this time seen as a friend of the other animals when they were younger. Although he still uses hypnosis on occasion, his skills at this age are far less efficient than when used as an adult, with him failing to hypnotize a sleeping Baloo and only hypnotizing two vultures by accident. He was also seen having far a less malevolent personality as a cub than as adult, once going to great lengths to save Baloo after he believes that he has endangered his friend, but he still has his sneaky ways in which he often attempts to (unsucessfully) hypnotize the other cubs, partly threatening Shere Khan on one occasion.
He was also seen in the prologue to the series on the Disney Video version, where he once again puts Mowgli back under his spell before being thwarted by Baloo. His voice was done by Jim Cummings, who reprised this role in The Jungle Book 2. Kaa appeared briefly in Disney's House of Mouse and in the feature film House of Villains, where he sang "Trust in Me" again during the main villain musical number. He is also a playable character and a mini-boss in The Jungle Book Groove Party, with his own song called "A Mood for Food."
Kaa returns in The Jungle Book 2, around the middle of the film. He appears, again attempting to as Shanti searches for Mowgli, Kaa appears again and quickly hypnotizes Shanti into a deep trance, luring her onto a boulder. As he prepares to swallow her, she is pulled out of the way just in time by Ranjan, leaving Kaa to swallow the boulder instead. Kaa gets another surprise visit from Shere Khan, who tries to get information about where Mowgli is from Kaa, but this time he really does not know where Mowgli is. To send Shere Khan off, he lies to him and tells him Mowgli is in the swamp. Kaa does not appear in the rest of the film.
Kaa has also earned himself a small following among hypno-and snake-fetishists. There are several role-playing websites one can visit that features Kaa (or a similar character of the role-player's imagination) hypnotizing hapless victims; in the more adult websites, he hypnotizes and then pleasures them in some way.