Gentle Heart is a character featured in the 2000 Disney live-action film Whispers: An Elephant's Tale. She is Whispers' mother who lives in the African savanna.
Background[]
Personality[]
Gentle Heart is shown to have a motherly personality to Whispers. After her son's birth, she teaches him how to walk like what all the other elephants are doing in the African savanna. She is shown to be gentle with her son, especially when it comes to telling him to meet the other elephants in the African savanna. In spite of this, she is shown to be fearful of hunters that arrive in the savanna, giving her a challenge for elephants in the savanna.
Role in the film[]
Gentle Heart is first seen giving birth to a newborn elephant calf who would later be named "Whispers". Shortly after his birth, she tells him to take the first steps so that she can meet the other elephants. While on his way to meet the elephants, Whispers asks his mother if she can provide milk for him, which she tells him to meet the herd of elephants in the savanna. All the other elephants are impressed to see Gentle Heart, just as the later tells her son to trumpet like a real elephant, just as he impresses them. Just as the other elephants leave for the Great River, Whispers' mother decides to give her son a proper name. Whispers then asks his mother to know which one of the elephants is his father, which Gentle Heart replies to him that there are no male elephants in herds, explaining that they move on.
Everything was peaceful until the elephants notice danger around them, just as Gentle Heart tells everyone to hurry up, due to a group of poachers on a hunt for elephants. Throughout the ambush, the poachers began shooting the elephants with their rifles, just as a worried Whispers tries to make sure his mother is safe, only for her mother to disappear during the ambush. Whispers narrates that he tried to call for help, but no one answered, recapping that he has never been separated from his mother before, fearing that he was preyed on by hyenas. Whispers waited for his mother, only to find out that he got separated from her, giving up all the hope and adapting to a new herd of elephants.
Following his separation from his mother, Whispers began to feel uncomfortable and think his mother was killed by hunters. Whispers encounters Half Tusk's sister Groove, attempting to help him find her mother throughout his life. During a series of events, things become challenging for Whispers, especially when it comes to the poachers, predators, and various types of hazards along the way, albeit unable to find his mother.
After all the other elephants praise Whispers for being a hero who saved them from the poachers, he sees an elephant from a distance; Whispers tells the elephants that they should meet her. Noticing that she is too far from him, Whispers gets her attention, followed by the other elephants who approach her. Whispers then realizes that the elephant he met is none other than his mother Gentle Heart who is shown to have survived, just as he reunites with his mother who has been searching for her son for so long, promising that she'd always take care of him. Whispers and his mother Gentle Heart are accepted into Half Tusk's herd.
Trivia[]
- The way Gentle Heart was separated from her son Whispers by a group of poachers at the beginning of the film when he was a baby reflects the infamous scene from the 1942 Disney film Bambi, where Bambi's mother was killed by a hunter. However, unlike Bambi's case, Whispers' mother survives rather than being killed.
- When Whispers tells Gentle Heart, "Got milk?", this is a reference to a titular advertising campaign.
- Despite appearing only at the beginning and ending of the film, Whispers being separated from his mother Gentle Heart plays a major impact throughout the film.
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