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Rikki-tikki-tavi is a young mongoose who lives with his family in the jungles of India. In the story’s inciting incident, he is swept away in a summer flood and carried far away from home. The mongoose is nearly killed but eventually rescued by a British family who welcomes him into their home. The flood is an important catalyst, which marks the start of Rikki-tikki’s maturation into a hero. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” is an adventure story but it is also presented as something of a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age narrative, in which we follow the protagonist’s journey from young adulthood to maturity. Most coming-of-age texts begin with the protagonist leaving the safety of home so that they can mature in an unknown space. Here, Kipling uses the flood to remove Rikki-tikki from his family and his burrow so that his hero’s journey can begin.
The rising action takes place in Teddy’s family’s bungalow and garden. Kipling highlights Rikki-tikki’s curious nature by devoting large passages of the story to his exploration of these unknown spaces. During these passages, Kipling juxtaposes descriptions of the natural world with descriptions of the bungalow’s common household objects to show that Rikki-tikki has entered a domestic sphere that is vastly different from the Indian wilderness to which he is accustomed. This section of the story contains complicated and racist implications about the so-called “benefits” of colonialism. Rikki-tikki's eagerness to trade his life in the jungles of India for domestication at the hands of a British family can be seen as indicative of the way Kipling views Indians—that is, that they should be grateful for Britain's interference in their affairs.
The rising action also includes Rikki-tikki’s repeated run-ins with various snakes. Rikki-tikki is a mongoose and it is a mongoose’s “business in life” to “fight and eat snakes.” Rikki-tikki has four battles with snakes over the course of the story. First, he fights Nag and Nagaina during his first morning in the bungalow garden and is unable to vanquish either of them. He then manages to kill the snakeling Karait when he tries to kill Teddy. Next, he realizes that Nag and Nagaina have snuck into the bungalow and intend to kill Teddy and his parents so that they can take over the house for their children. Rikki-tikki manages to kill Nag and is celebrated by Teddy’s father for protecting his new adopted family. Finally, he instigates a fight with Nagaina because he knows that she will want to seek vengeance on him and his new family for killing her husband. Rikki-tikki’s different altercations with various snakes may seem repetitive but they actually further our protagonist’s maturation. Rikki-tikki is brave, but he is also clever. With each battle, he gains experience and learns from his mistakes until he is ready to defeat his adversaries.
Rikki-tikki’s final battle with Nagaina is his most intense, because Nagaina is “worse than five Nags.” Here, Kipling adheres to the conventions of the adventure fiction genre by having his protagonist fight their greatest foe at the end of the text. Rikki-tikki manages to outsmart Nagaina, first by sending a diversion to distract her while he destroys all but one of her eggs and then by getting her away from Teddy and his family. Rikki-tikki fight with Nagaina continues until, in the story’s climax, he follows her into her cobra hole and kills her. This final battle marks the end of his coming of age; it cements Rikki-tikki’s hero status. It is no surprise, then, that the falling action portion of the text is composed of a few short sentences that celebrate Rikki-tikki’s bravery and name him the protector of the bungalow garden. The story then concludes with the narrator’s assurance that no cobra would dare show its face at the bungalow ever again.
