SOURCE: McMaster, Juliet. “The Trinity Archetype in The Jungle Books and The Wizard of Oz.” Children's Literature 20 (1992): 90-110.

In the following essay, McMaster establishes parallels between the adaptation of the Christian Trinity archetype in Kipling's The Jungle Books and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The magical and mystical significance of the number three is common to myth, religion, and children's literature. But though the cluster of three is important, it is also expected that the units within the cluster be subtly differentiated, and in some sense opposed and complementary. The most familiar constellation of this grouping and opposition is of course the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three in one. But the Trinity of Western culture is only one example of many such groupings in which the three elements are joined and opposed in a structure that is psychologically, morally, and artistically satisfying. Not...