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=                           Green_Mansions                           =
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                            Introduction
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'Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest' is a 1904 exotic
romance by William Henry Hudson about a traveller to the Guyana jungle
of southeastern Venezuela and his encounter with a forest-dwelling
girl named Rima.

The principal characters are Abel, Rima, Nuflo, Cla-Cla and Kua-kó.


                            Plot summary
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Prologue: An unnamed narrator tells how he befriended an old
"Hispano-American" gentleman who never spoke of his past. His interest
piqued, the narrator finally elicits the story.

Venezuela, c. 1875. Abel, a young man of wealth, fails at a revolution
and flees Caracas into the uncharted forests of Guayana. Surviving
fever, failing at journal-keeping and gold hunting, he settles in an
Indian village to waste away his life: playing guitar for old Cla-Cla,
hunting badly with Kua-kó, telling stories to the children. After some
exploring, Abel discovers an enchanting forest where he hears a
strange bird-like singing. His Indian friends avoid the forest because
of its evil spirit-protector, "the Daughter of the Didi." Persisting
in the search, Abel finally finds Rima the Bird Girl. She has dark
hair, a smock of spider webs, and can communicate with birds in an
unknown tongue. When she shields a coral snake, Abel is bitten and
falls unconscious.

Abel awakens in the hut of Nuflo, an old man who protects his
"granddaughter" Rima, and won't reveal her origin. As Abel recovers,
Rima leads him through the forest, and Abel wonders about her identity
and place of origin. Abel returns to the Indians, but relations become
icy, because they would kill Rima, if they could. Rima often speaks of
her dead mother, who was always depressed. Abel falls in love with
Rima, but she (17 and a stranger to white men) is confused by "odd
feelings". This relationship is further strained because Abel cannot
speak her unknown language.

Atop Ytaiao Mountain, Rima questions Abel about "the world" known and
unknown, asking him if she was unique and alone. Abel sadly reveals
that it is true. However, when he mentions the storied mountains of
Riolama, Rima perks up. It turns out that "Riolama" is her real name.
Nuflo must know where Riolama is, so a wrathful Rima demands that
Nuflo guide her to Riolama under threats of eternal damnation from her
sainted mother. Old, guilty and religious, Nuflo caves in to the
pressure. Abel pays a last visit to the Indians, but they capture him
as a prisoner, suspecting that he is a spy for an enemy tribe or
consorts with demons. Abel manages to escape and return to Rima and
Nuflo. The three then trek to distant Riolama. Along the way, Nuflo
reveals his past, and Rima's origin.

Seventeen years ago, Nuflo led bandits who preyed on Christians and
Indians. Eventually, forced to flee to the mountains, they found a
cave to live in. Hiding in the cave was a strange woman speaking a
bird-like language. She was to be Rima's mother (never named). Nuflo
assumed the woman was a saint sent to save his soul. Nuflo left the
bandits and carried Rima's mother, now crippled for life, to Voa, a
Christian community, to deliver Rima. Rima and her mother talked in
their magical language for seven years, until Mother wasted away in
the dampness and died. As contrition, Nuflo brought Rima to the drier
mountains. The local Indians found her queer, and resented how she
chased off game animals, and therefore tried to kill her. A mis-shot
dart killed an Indian, and they fled Rima's "magic".

In the cave, Rima is eager to enter Riolama valley. Abel reveals sad
news: her mother left because nothing remained. She belonged to a
gentle, vegetarian people without weapons, who were wiped out by
Indians, plague and other causes. Rima is indeed unique and alone.
Rima is saddened but suspected it: her mother was always depressed.
Now she decides to return to the forest and prepare a life for herself
and Abel. She flits away, leaving Abel to fret as he and Nuflo walk
home, delayed by rain and hunger. They return to find the forest
silent, Nuflo's hut burned down, and Indians hunting game. Abel,
exhausted, is again taken prisoner, but isn't killed, as he quickly
makes a vow to go to war against the enemy tribe. On the war trail, he
drops hints about Rima and her whereabouts. Kua-Ko explains how,
thanks to Abel's "bravery", the Indians dared enter the forbidden
forest. They caught Rima in the open, chased her up the giant tree.
They heaped brush underneath it and burned Rima.

Abel kills Kua-kó and runs to the enemy tribe, sounding the alarm.
Days later he returns. All his Indian friends are dead. He finds the
giant tree burned, and collects Rima's ashes in a pot. Trekking
homeward, despondent and hallucinating, Abel is helped by Indians and
Christians until he reaches the sea, sane and healthy again. Now an
old man, his only ambition is to be buried with Rima's ashes.
Reflecting back, he believes neither God nor man can forgive his sins,
but that gentle Rima would, provided he has forgiven himself.


                             Background
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Hudson based Rima and her lost tribe on persistent rumours about a
tribe of white people who lived in the mountains. Temple paintings
often showed light-skinned people, and Spanish Conquistadors were
purportedly thought to be gods. 'Green Mansions' also features some
cryptozoological concepts such as 'Curupita' (Curupira) and 'Didi'
purportedly representing giant apes unknown by science.

Many authors of the time also recounted "lost worlds" and "lost
tribes", the most successful being H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice
Burroughs, Robert E. Howard and Arthur Conan Doyle. Hudson's book has
endured as literature because of its evocative and lyrical prose, and
his naturalist's keen vision of the jungle.

Rima also exemplifies the "natural man", a philosophical notion put
forth by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, that someone raised away
from corrupting civilisation would be naturally pure of heart and
attuned to their environment. Tarzan, raised by apes, and Mowgli,
raised by wolves, are Rima's literary cousins.

In the Classics Illustrated comic book adaptation, the editor says,
"We also feel that Hudson wants to tell us in this story that, long
before this present meat-eating and destructive race took over all the
world, there was a race of beings on the earth - beautiful, innocent,
and bird-like, who lived in peace with nature and themselves, and of
whom Rima and her mother were the last".

The plot of the book resembles that in Hudson's 1887 novel 'A Crystal
Age'.


                          Book publication
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The book was originally published in 1904. A new edition of this book
published in the United States in 1912 with a foreword by John
Galsworthy. It was one of the first books published by Alfred A. Knopf
and their first bestseller. The book went through nine printings by
1919 and had sold over 20,000 copies. This also created interest in
Hudson's other titles.


          Film, TV, theatrical and comic book adaptations
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In 1937, Louis Gruenberg (1884-1964) composed a radio opera 'Green
Mansions', which used a musical saw in the score.

In 1951, The Gilberton Co. released a comic book adaptation of 'Green
Mansions' as issue number 90 in their 'Classics Illustrated' series.
Direct quotes from the novel were used. In this adaptation Rima is
blonde. The art was by Alex Blum, who drew many other issues of the
'Classics Illustrated' series.

In 1959, the book was adapted into a movie, also entitled 'Green
Mansions', starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima, with Anthony Perkins as
Abel. The film, which was directed by Hepburn's husband, Mel Ferrer,
was a critical and box office failure.

In the early 1970s, one of the more unusual adaptations of 'Green
Mansions' occurred when DC Comics launched the comic book 'Rima the
Jungle Girl', featuring the title character recast as a Sheena-like
action hero. This version of the character later appeared on the
animated TV series 'Super Friends'.

'Rima the Jungle Girl' returned to the DC Universe in a new pulp-era
comic debuting in 2010 entitled First Wave. Rima was portrayed as a
South American native with piercings and tattoos, who didn't speak,
but communicated in bird-like whistles. Plying a big knife and a
panther, she helped Doc Savage's assistant Johnny Littlejohn, then
disappeared back into the forest.

In her 1973 story 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In', James Tiptree Jr.'s
character Paul Isham III finds inspiration from the novel to abduct
and rescue a beautiful but ill-fated young girl named
Delphi--unbeknownst to him, an advertising puppet operated by a
deformed pilot--whom Isham identifies with Rima.


                           External links
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mansions