Kaa
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2008-07-13T21:23:14Z
George100
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{{otheruses}}. For other uses, see [[Kaa (disambiguation)]].
{{otheruses}}
{{unreferenced|date=April 2008}}
'''Kaa''' is a character from the [[Mowgli]] stories written by [[Rudyard Kipling]], and from the subsequent cartoon animations.
==Kipling version==
{{quote|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.|[[Rudyard Kipling]], [[The Jungle Book]]}}
{{quote|A brave heart and a courteous tongue (...) shall carry thee far through the jungle.|Master Word of Kaa}}
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]] ([[monkey]]s) 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]]". He and Mowgli spend some time relaxing, bathing and wrestling (Kipling may perhaps have been inspired to write this scene by [[Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton|Lord Leighton]]'s statue ''Athlete Wrestling with a Python''). Then Kaa persuades Mowgli to visit a treasure chamber guarded by an old [[Cobra (snake)|cobra]] beneath the 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 (Rudyard Kipling)|Red Dog]]" Mowgli asks Kaa for help when his [[wolf]] pack is threatened by rampaging [[dhole]] (the red dogs of the title). In one of the most striking scenes in the series, Kaa goes into a trance so that he can search his century-long memory for a stratagem to defeat the dogs:
{{cquote|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?”}}
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.
==Disney version==
{{DisneyChar
| name =Kaa
| image =[[Image:DisneyKaa.PNG|300px]]
| image caption =Kaa as he appears in the first film
| first appearance =''[[The Jungle Book (1967 film)|The Jungle Book]]''
| created by =[[Rudyard Kipling]]
| voiced by =[[Sterling Holloway]] (English, ''The Jungle Book'')<br>[[Jim Cummings]] (English, ''Jungle Cubs'', ''House of Mouse'', ''The Jungle Book 2'')<br>[[Roger Carel]] (French, ''The Jungle Book'', ''The Jungle Book 2'')<br>[[Erich Kestin]] (German, ''The Jungle Book'')<br>[[Kai Taschner]] (German, ''Jungle Cubs'')<br>[[Sergio Tedesco]] (Italian, ''The Jungle Book'', ''The Jungle Book 2'')<br>[[Shun Yashiro]] (Japanese, ''The Jungle Book'', ''House of Mouse'')
| aliases =
}}
Kaa, voiced by [[Sterling Holloway]], is markedly different in the Disney films. 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 [[hypnosis|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, and is also quite cowardly, attempting to suck up to 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 Bagheera 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 first encounters Mowgli out of chance, after [[Bagheera]] takes Mowgli away from the wolf pack. Drawing on Bagheera's "Now, please, go to sleep, man-cub..." Kaa begins hypnotizing Mowgli, singing a seductive lullaby and wrapping him up with his long tail. Before Kaa can consume Mowgli, he is attacked by a fast-acting Bagheera, breaking Mowgli out of his hypnotism. In retaliation, Kaa begins to hypnotise Bagheera, but cannot do much as Mowgli shoves Kaa's coils off the tree, leaving Kaa to slither off angrily. Kaa appears again when Mowgli runs away from [[Baloo]]. 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 was not convinced by Kaa's bluff even after searching Kaa's coils and not feeling Mowgli inside, and probably decided to leave feeling confident Kaa would get rid of Mowgli for him.
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 than in the movie (and as an adult), once going to great lengths to save Baloo after he believes that he has endangered his friend, although he does partly threaten 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's planned appearance in ''[[TaleSpin]]'' never materialized, but he appeared briefly in ''[[Disney's House of Mouse]]'' and in the feature film ''House of Villains'', where he sang "[[Trust in Me (1967 song)|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 "[[The Jungle Book Groove Party|A Mood for Food]]."
Kaa returns in ''[[The Jungle Book 2]]'', around the middle of the film. He appears, again attempting to consume Mowgli, during a reprisal of "[[The Bare Necessities]]." Later, 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, only this time he really doesn't know where Mowgli is. To send Shere Khan off, he lies to him and tells him Mowgli is in the swamp. Kaa is not seen for the rest of the film.
==Similar fictional snakes==
*[[Asmodeus (Redwall)]]
*[[Ella Enchanted (film)|Heston (Ella Enchanted)]]
*[[List_of_The_Wild_characters#Larry|Larry (The Wild)]]
*[[Sir Hiss|Sir Hiss (Robin Hood)]]
[[Category:The Jungle Book characters]]
[[Category:Disney's The Jungle Book characters]]
[[Category:Fictional snakes]]
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