Rikki Tavi Characters

Rikki-tikki-tavi is an interesting short story about a brave house mongoose that protects a family of 3 with a little kid named Teddy. The mongoose goes by the name Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. The story is written by Rudyard Kipling who is also the writer of the Jungle Book. I will focus this essay of Nagaina who is one of the antagonists of the story. She is the evil wife of Nag and they are both king cobras. In the the story she clearly shows that she is a wicked, vengeful, and protective character.

Nagaina first shows how wicked she is, at the beginning of the story. This happens when Rikki is telling Nag that you shouldn’t eat baby birds. Little does Rikki know that Nag has a wife who means to kill him. Lucky for Rikki, Darzee the bird warns him so he jumped “up in the air as high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina, Nag’s wicked wife.”(19)

On the other side of the garden Nagaina is “on the rubbish heap by the stables, mourning for Nag.”(25) Eventually Nagaina finds herself chasing Darzee’s wife past the bungalow where she decides to go inside. This is where she will strike Teddy. In the bungalow Nagaina has Teddy cornered when she is met by Rikki. She than says to the family that lives in the bungalow, “keep very still, all you three! If you move, I strike, and if you do not move, I strike. Oh, foolish people who killed my Nag!”(24/25) Eventually Rikki saves Teddy from Nagaina threatening her with her very last