I found this story very sad and not something anyone should have been proud of. The rich lady keeps animals to amuse herself and congratulate herself o her generosity. Animals are wild and they stay wild no matter how much humans love them.
The baby gorilla was doomed. He should have been taken to a zoo as soon as he was well instead of being taught to walk on two feet and scrub their floor and other 'people' acts.
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I agree with you, mnbush. Buddy's story is a tragic one. He ended up being sold to the Ringling Bros. Circus after he crawled into bed with his mother (Gertrude Lintz) because he was terrified by a thunderstorm.
His life from then on was shear hell. He died in 1949 of double pneumonia. He was in very poor condition. Circuses should not be allowed to have animals. They are horribly abused and neglected. It's the worst kind of life imaginable. You can look him up online to read what happened to him. They changed his name to Gargantua, and he was the star attraction of the circus until his death at an early age.
It's wrong to acculturate apes. People think it's so wonderful to raise them as human babies. Then, when they get to be too big and powerful to handle, what happens to them? People even did "scientific research studies" where they raised acculturated apes.
There was a famous study at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where they raised an acculturated orangutan named Chantek who was taught sign language. The university abruptly ended the study and sent him to live under horrific conditions for many years. While he was rescued from that situation in 1997, and now lives in a really nice zoo, he is miserable and depressed. He says that he thinks that he is a "human orangutan." He asks for the cheeseburgers and other junk food that he was fed on a regular basis by the researchers who ran the study.
He hate living with the other orangutans and refers to them as "dogs" in a derogatory manner.
These apes don't have a chance. They can't live as human, nor can they live as apes.
This movie should have made that point, but the movie makers couldn't be bothered to. I was so upset by it that I changed the channel. According to people who watched the whole thing and reviewed it said that they didn't make the point that would have made this movie worthwhile.
Yes people should be told the truth. Unfortunately movies often do not in many ways. Whether it is a cat or a parrot or an alligator or a gorilla, people need to know how much responsibility the adult is.
I just saw the ending. They do show Buddy going out of control, but then they show him going to a place with plenty of room to play in and at least one other gorilla to be with. Nothing close to the real ending.
I am sure the author of the book did not tell the whole story about Buddy. It could be that he did not like being locked up and began to protest. He was probably too much to handle, probably worse than what the author described in her book and had to be locked up but did not like it. Okay, so the author blames the thunderstorm but there was probably more going on than what she admitted.