Just So Stories

Kipling’s Just So Stories were originally developed as bedtime stories told aloud to his young daughter. Since they were originally meant to be spoken and not read, the stories contain a particular rhythm and cadence, which rhyming plays an important part in maintaining. The rhyming is sometimes obvious, for example when the Mariner is trapped in the Whale’s stomach, an entire rhyming paragraph describes his attempt to disturb the Whale: “[H]e stumped and he jumped and he thumped and he bumped, and he pranced and he danced,” and so on (2). 

The characters also tell themselves little poems, such as when the Parsee man seeks his revenge on the Rhinoceros: “Them that takes cakes / Which the Parsee-man bakes / Makes dreadful mistakes” (8-9). Similarly, the Painted Jaguar recites, “Can’t curl, but can swim— / Slow-Solid, that’s him! / Curls up, but can’t swim— / Stickly-Prickly, that’s him!” (31) when he is trying to remember how to tell the difference between the Tortoise and the Hedgehog. 

However, there are also instances of rhyming that are subtler and easier to miss, especially if one is not reading aloud and listening to the sound of the words.