uses a metaphor ash He compares the knowledge need to survive in the jungle to “business” in an urban setting: “Father Wolf taught him his business…,” and then uses a simile to say it is as valuable “as the work of his [a businessman’s] office….”

Later, when a herd of cattle goes over the edge of a ravine, Kipling uses another simile, comparing them to rocks:

the torrent of black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the ravine just as boulders go down in floodtime….

Kipling also uses imagery throughout. Rather than rely exclusively on visual images, he includes extensive descriptions of many different environments within the jungle, building up vivid images with intricate details that appeal to the senses. He incorporates similes and metaphors within them. The description of the monkeys’ Lost City in “Kaa’s Hunting” is one good example.

But the walls were made of screens of marble tracery—beautiful milk-white fretwork, set with agates and cornelians and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the hill it shone through the open work, casting shadows on the ground like black velvet embroidery.

Figurative language is any phrase or sentence that is not meant to be taken literally. Similes and metaphors are subcategories of figurative language. Like most works of fiction, The Jungle Book is filled with examples of figurative language used to describe characters and their inner states of being, settings, and even action as it happens. Here are a few examples of author Rudyard Kipling's use of figurative language.

From "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi":

"It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity."

The mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is not literally eaten up (by curiosity or anything else). It's a metaphor for how fundamental the trait of curiosity is to a mongoose's personality.

From "The Song of Mowgli":

"These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the spring."

Mowgli is referring to the fact that he feels both joy at Shere Khan's defeat and a sorrowful feeling that he belongs neither to the jungle nor the village any more; he uses the simile of two snakes fighting to explain his inner state. Later he will refer to these two parts of himself as "two Mowglis," another example of figurative language, as there are not literally two Mowgli twins but only one Mowgli experiencing two divergent emotions.

Elsewhere in The Jungle Book, Kipling writes that "Bagheera's eyes were as hard as jade stones." He does not mean that the panther's eyes were literally as dense as gemstone; he means the look that Bagheera gives Mowgli is stern, and he uses a simile to express this.

In "The Law of the Jungle," Kipling says that "as the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back." This simile compares The Law of the Jungle to a vine that runs back and forth along a tree's trunk as it climbs and grows. The implication is that balance is found in the middle of the two extremes, "forward" and "back," and that is what the Law of the Jungle aims for in its rules.
The Jungle Book is filled with other examples of figurative language, such as "The tiger's roar filled the cave with thunder" (a metaphor) and "Her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness" (a simile). Look for it especially but not exclusively in Kipling's poetic verse, as figurative language is a particularly powerful tool in composing effective and moving poetry.

In the chapter called "Kaa's Hunting," Baloo and Bagheera enlist the aid of the great thirty-foot python in recovering Mowgli from the Monkey People. Both the bear and the panther are afraid of the snake, though they are not his natural prey and the monkeys are. They approach Kaa cautiously and, among other inducements to help them, recount that the monkeys have been insulting him, calling him a yellow earth-worm.

In fact, the monkeys are terrified of Kaa, which is why Baloo and Bagheera want his help so much. Kaa's principally eats goats and other ground-dwelling animlas, but he can climb through the trees as well as the monkeys and sometimes preys upon them. The figurative language describing his hunting comes from the monkeys' descriptions. They say that he can slip along the branches "as quietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey that ever lived." They also say that he can make himself look "like a dead branch or a rotten stump," though this is a deliberate effort on his part to resemble a piece of wood, rather than simply a descriptive simile. Although it seems that "yellow earth-worm" is a formulation made up in this instance by Baloo and Bagheera to anger Kaa against the monkeys, his recognition of the term and his repetition of the similar term "yellow fish" show that he is used to such figurative language from them.