Essay On Feral Children

“He's a feral child. No mother, no father, no one to care for him or raise him or teach him how to be human. So he's existed much like an animal, without language. He thinks in images, not words." (Philbrick) Feral children are raised in the wild by animals. They assimilate features from the animal, and though these can be “reversed”, the children usually never learn to communicate in the form of speech. Although many people are raised in a typical American home, Feral children show the true nature of humans left absent from civilization.
There are a number cases in which children have gone missing and are later found in the jungle living with animals. For example, Wild Peter was found at age twelve. He had inherited many animal like features such as acute hearing and a
Much like the way television depicts feral children through movies such as Tarzan and Mowgli. They are usually unhappy when brought into civilization and prefer the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. Furthermore, since the child is isolated, they learn from their environment. This stems from the concept of “Nurture vs. Nature”. The Nurture theory states that environmental factors are the real origin of behavior (Sincero). The animals and surrounding influences impact the way the children function. Everyone is born as a “blank slate” and it is left up to the environment and other influences to instruct the direction of that individual’s life. In comparison to the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the creature was like a feral child when he escaped from Frankenstein. The creature discovered the world and acted like different animals, “Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds… and found that the sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and thrush were sweet and enticing.” (Shelley) but soon discovered other humans and learned to talk and