Social Isolation In Peter The Wild Boy Moorhouse

Social isolation can have many different kinds of consequences, but the children who experience this type of isolation are some of the most interesting cases. Feral children are often abandoned or mistreated and are forced to extremes to survive.

When they are discovered they are afraid and frail. They did not meet certain important milestones in their early childhood due to being abandoned . In order to fully comprehend wild/feral children one must look at how they are created, are treated, and effect society.

The first category a one should examine in order to fully comprehend feral children is the definition and creation. In Jack Laskys “Feral Child” he explains the definition of a feral child as “a child who from an early age has lived

There have been many accounts of wild children who have been captured and observed over the years. In Roger Moorhouse’s Peter the Wild Boy Moorhouse describes one of the many children that was encountered, “In the summer of 1725 a peculiar youth was found in the forest of Hertswood near Hamelin in northern Germany.

Aged about 12, he walked on all fours and fed on grass and leaves. 'A naked, brownish,black-haired creature', he would run up trees when approached and could utter no intelligible sound. He refused bread, but gorged himself on vegetables, fruit and rare meat, greedily grasping at the dishes and eating noisily from his hands, until he was ordered to be taken away. He was given the name of Peter, but was variously known as 'Wild Peter', 'Peter of Hanover', or, most famously, 'Peter the Wild Boy'. In this excerpt Moorhouse is illustrating a young boy who behaved like an animal when he would perform normal action like walking or eating. In Brian Masters Savage Girls

If this was the case, he argued, it would help to explain Peter's peculiar origins — a point that had also bothered Defoe.” Moorhouse states that some of the characteristics that peter portrayed were those of a child who was mentally incapable of doing everyday things. Specialists have also come out to reveal their hypothesis on a child becoming feral. Brian Masters, in his article, stated the reason that was given to why Ivan, the wild moscovite boy was wild, “He is believed to have run away from home when he was three years old after seeing his father murder his mother.” By this Masters means that environmental exposure can lead to the creation of a feral child.

The second category that one must examine in order to fully comprehend feral children is their treatment. In the article Feral children, the author states that

“Fascination with wild children, however, remains, and the fates of such children become deeply tied to the doctors, teachers, and caregivers who, through measurement, diagnosis, training, and compassion, inevitably attempt to