Review: Jill Dawson's Wild Boy

Jill Dawson's novel, Wild Boy is the dramatizationof the story of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron and the clues that lead the author to believe that Victor is perhaps, the first documented case of autism. In 1800 a 12 year old boy is discovered living in the woods outside of Aveyron, France. Though no one knows exactly how long he was in the woods, he is believed to have lived there for around five years. He had no known human interaction and is covered in dirt and scars when he wanders out of the woods in search of roots and berries. The biggest scar may perhaps tell the true story of his life. It appears that whoever had abandoned this boy in the woods, had intended that he die there, leaving a deep, long gash across the child's neck. Did this person know something about the boy that no one else realized?

The savage boy was brought to Paris surrounded by much hype. The expectations for Victor were high. During the age of Enlightenment, Victor seemed the prime study of what it meant to be human. Here was a true boy of nature, a vessel of out true innocence. The flurry of excitement that surrounded the savage boy, were quickly replaced with disappointment. The gift that so many intellects had waited for in anticipation was little more than a foul animal. He smelled vile, was dirty and had no language. When it seemed that Victor would spend his life in an asylum, Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard intervened. Itard took Victor in at the National Institute of Deaf Mutes convinced that he would teach him to talk. So begins the tale of a unique education involving Victor, Itard and Madame Guerin, Itard's housekeeper.

Dawson takes what is already an amazing story and turns it into a dramatic and moving book. The reader is taken through the education of Victor through the voices of three main characters. The first narrative voice is that of Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, Victor's teacher. The second voice is Madame Guerin, Itard's house-keeper, who offers Victor the love and affection that Itard does not. The two have been described as nature and nurture. The third voice is the one give to Victor, a boy who spoke a maximum of four words in his lifetime.

Through out the novel, Dawson walks us through many conflicts between the characters. Above all conflicts is one that plagues each of the feral child cases studied today-who's method is best. While Itard's method was nature, Madame Guerin was the nurture. Itard believed in being firm, working his student to the point of exhaustion. Madame Guerin believed in nurturing the child and teaching him with the gentleness of a mother. Each only trying to do what he/she believes is right.

Dr. Itard stakes his career on the fact that he can tame Victor and teach him to speak. Dawson points out that what Itard doesn't take into account, what he has no way of realizing, is that Victor is autistic. Dawson brings insights to the novel that she has gained from her relationship with her son, who has Autism. She states that autism explains Victor's survival in the wild with examples such as: no sense of danger, lack of feeling extremes and a distance from his surroundings. She shows the reader various other signs of autism such as fascination with certain sounds such as the letter 'o' and the sound of a nut cracking.

Dawson has a gift for demonstrating how Itard shares the same flaws as his student. Itard's obsession with sameness and repetition, along with other particular behaviors, suggest that Itard himself may have been slightly autistic. He fails to give or receive love and it is suggested in his notes that he sees Itard as a mirror image of himself. It is questionable whether Victor needs his caretakers or whether they need him more.

While history shows Itard as the principal care taker and educator in Victor's life, Dawson paints a different picture. She shows Guerin as a strong woman, a leading role in Victor's life. She uses Guerin's role to show how mothers caring for atypical children are highly underestimated.

"Man is only what he is made to be", argues Dawson. She takes the few documented facts and turns them into a phenomenal story of human nature, and the delicate relationship between teacher and student. The author takes the reader through a brilliantly written novel of what may very well be the first documented case of autism. You can take the wild boy from the forest, but you can't force him out of himself.