MovieChat Forums > Nell (1994) Discussion > Is Nell a feral?

Is Nell a feral?

posted 17 years ago by ooohhhmmyyyy
2 replies | jump to latest

I just read about feral children and they are either raised by animals or they were isolated like locked in a room so they were never around lot of people so they didn't learn how to talk, and walk, etc.

Nell was isolated in the forest, never was around people because she didn't have a car so there was no way she could drive to town. She was a small child when her mother died, I don't know what happened to her sister. So she had been alone ever since. So she didn't have human language, she acted like an animal when other humans got near her, had some autistic behavior like sensitive to noise like the sound of a helicopter and sensitive to flashing lights like the camera going off when Laim or Natasha took a picture of her.

Would Nell be considered feral because she was isolated from the rest of the world so she never developed properly?

http://s10.invisionfree.com/Nova_Infinity/

[–] Molly-31 16 years ago

Watch the film again. I think you may have missed the first few minutes. She was not feral nor was she autistic, she was socialized differently. You'd react that way too.

[–] StuTheWarriorDucky 16 years ago

Mmk first of all, Nell's mom didn't die when she was "very young". She died right at the beginning of the movie, when Nell was about 27.

Autism is not an aquired thing--you're born with it. Nell is not autistic.

She spoke. She even spoke in English sentences, but she had learned to talk from her mother, who could only speak out of one side of her mouth due to a series of strokes. The non-English words were a product of Nell+Twins "twinspeak".

Nell is not feral. She was not developmentally an adult, but nor was she unable to learn.