The Wolf Boy
- Details
- Hits: 23236
The author is associated with orderwriters.com which is a global custom writing company. If you would like help in custom writing or term paper writing and essays, you can visit orderwriters.com.
It was the dry season and a young boy of the forest was playing with wolf cubs. The young boy evidently ran fast of the four and could hide from the sun or aggression. During their play time, a man comes across them playing and runs to capture a boy wolf easily enough and takes him home. When captured the boy had dark skin, matted hair, claw-like finger and nail toes with thick calluses on his hands, elbows and knees. Narsing Singh who captures the boy is a village headman in Narangpur where he later takes the boy to in an orphanage.
The wolf reared children were of the forests of their places of origin. They lived and behaved just like wolves, and opted for no clothes and taking raw food. They appeared ghost like creatures resembling human, but who still ran on all their limbs. They had a lot of fur on their head and shoulders with their eyes shining bright. These wolves attacked humans in the dusk as they broke from the forests of the hill where they inhabited. Some of the wolves were very furious and could not be turned away by people. The residents of the areas inhabited with the wolves used to attack and kill the older wolves, but spared the cub wolves of who they sold in the market.
From the book “Werewolves”, it can be seen that there were orphanage that were used to rehabilitate the wolf children who were captured, just as Singh chose to rehabilitate the wolf boy picked from the forest. These wolf children were not able to stand upright and behaved like wolves, but when they were rehabilitated, they were able to gradually acquire human characters. Just as human, they are able to speak and so are able to acquire diseases and succumb to illness. The distinction between them with human however was that they were excited by the smell off blood and could attack other animals such as chicken and eat them raw.Shamdeo also lacked the knowledge of any language thus could not speak.
The environment where they lived was dense vegetation and they could pass through the thickets with bamboos poles filled all over. The forest was filled with thorns, though there were signs of human advancement through the thicket. The thorns were still fresh even in the brightening of the sun and clear green vegetation could be observed of the hills. The wolves depended on the hornbills whose noise to them indicated the advancement of an enemy and they could rush to hide.
At first, Shamdeo would rip off clothes and throw away cooked food at the orphanage, but later on, just as any other child would gradually adopt through rehabilitation, he settled in to the orphanage life. He gradually developed rudimentary sign language and the calluses disappeared from his elbows and knees. He was feared human as he perceived them to be enemies and to him he felt he could be hurt. He felt so insecure in his new environment and he could wary and shackle like a wolf if anyone approached him.
While Shamdeo was with Narsing Singh, he was still seen to be afraid of human beings and preferred to stay in the dark than the light. He feared the sun and could be seen to grow restless in the end of the dark. If any stranger approached or he felt advances, he could look around as if there was a potential danger. He could not play with other children and could be harsh to them as he preferred playing with animals, and would always feel threatened living with people. Shamdeo also continued eating raw meat and milk and expressed attraction to raw flesh.
While with Singh, the boy was not still able to adopt the human character. He could not walk upright nor even communicate through verbal expression but continued to crawl and growl and sending expressions of his own sign language. He continually stayed hidden away from the lights but always on alert as if he feared. This confirms how the boy was insecure in his new environment. Shamdeo was always supervised even when with other children to ensure that he did not get violent. Even though he found it hard to evolve into human nature, the boy was taken through the adoption process which enabled him to adopt the human diet, walking style and improve his sign language to match that of the human.
The boy was seen to be able to develop the capacity to live around with other people and make adjustments that could make him fit into full human being. Efforts were made to help the boy to improve on all the areas of human life and even be trained to be able to conduct simple tasks. Even with the efforts, Shamdeo still managed to escape the grip of Singh and went to scavange around. The boy is later captured and taken to a children’s home run by Mother Teresa charity organization.
Reference
Suckling, N. (2006).Werewolves. London: AAPPL