Nell Essay, Research Paper

1) The loss of Nell?s twin sister had a dramatic effect on her. Nell and May were

raised in a secluded environment with no outside contact. As a result, May and Nell

became very close emotionally and were an integral part in each others lives. When May

died, Nell lost part of her life as well which resulted in vivid memory replay. A good

example of this is when Nell was turning around in circles by herself but, in her mind, she

was turning around in circles with her missing half. At the end of the movie, the evidence

of the importance of May in Nell?s life was still evident as Nell played will Jerry?s daughter

on the rocks that May and her once played on. The movie did portray what is generally

believed about twins. The loss of one had a dramatic effect on the other. They had their

own twin speech and their own games. At the end of 20 plus years, Nell still felt the loss

of her twin sister.

2) The expert psychologist in the movie believed that Nell was mentally retarded

and had made a small amount of intellectual development as a result of being raised in

seclusion. Fortunately, they were wrong. The speech that Nell gave in the courtroom

proved that she had developed intellectually. While the language that she used was

different, Nell still gave a good list of very abstract ideas that someone who is mentally

retarded could not possibly comprehend. Nell understood why she was different saying

that she was raised in a small world and knew small things unlike the large things found in

the city of Charlotte, N.C. This proved that Nell was very capable of living by herself and

taking care of herself.

3) The experts, in the beginning of the movie, said that Nell was not capable of

making the correct judgments to make in the world by herself. They did not believe that

Nell had the wisdom to make the correct choices in life situations. It seemed evident to

me that Nell already possessed more than enough wisdom to make it on her own. After

all, she basically took care of her crippled mother all by herself.

4) Nell is not mentally retarded. Nell was raised in seclusion with her twin sister

and a crippled mother. The things that Nell learned were obtained socially from a woman

that had loss the use of part of her body. The body language that Nell had learned were

obviously learned from observing her mother. For an outside viewer Nell must have

looked like she was mentally retarded to some degree when, in fact, Nell was simply

portraying the behavior that she learned from her mother. Nell learned almost all of her

actions through observation. A good example of this is Nell acting like a tree blowing in

the wind.

5) In the beginning of the movie I did not think that Nell should be taken out of

her home. Nell was surrounded basically with nothing but her own thoughts for almost

twenty years. Putting her in an environment where thousands of outside things affect her

thoughts would have been overwhelming. Nell was much like a young child in that she

was unaware of what was socially acceptable. In this respect, taking Nell out of her home

would have been extremely dangerous and traumatic as was seen in the bar scene with the

young men. Nell had no idea that nudity was socially unacceptable and made a mistake.

My position on this was never swayed. I believed that Nell needed to find someone that

she trusted and that could teach her about the strange world that she had never been a part

of. This needed to be accomplished in the comfort of a familiar surrounding. So, I agree

100% with the decision to leave Nell in her home in the woods.