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Allen Gibson
Karl is Nicola’s father and Louise’s wife. When he meets and bonds with a seal pup, he begins a precious, decades-long partnership which involves the two of them hunting enormous Oneblood tuna together. This relationship—and its traumatic end, which comes when a pod of orca whales kills the seal—emphasizes the power of nature to equally delight and terrify humans who witness it. Though Karl’s relationship with Nicola is somewhat detached, her fond memories of him smiling at her suggest that he represents a kind of stable, sturdy love for her—one that she seems to attempt to replicate in her relationship with Charlotte.
Karl (Nicola’s Father) Quotes in Flames
The Flames quotes below are all either spoken by Karl (Nicola’s Father) or refer to Karl (Nicola’s Father). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Salt Quotes
Back at home the girls showed no interest in hunting Onebloods. Instead, he taught them to push hooks through frozen squid and hurl them out into the water, which they loved as much as he found it boring. And through sharing this banal activity with his daughters he somehow developed an affection for the activity itself, and found himself angling off the rocks even when the girls were away in Devonport, casting and catching and occasionally crying, but only when the mist was clear and he could see past the heads towards the tall spires where the seals still hauled out, or so he assumed.
Related Characters:
Karl (Nicola’s Father), Nicola
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
21-22
Explanation and Analysis:
Though Karl tries to encourage his daughters to share his passion for fishing, they enjoy fishing with hooks and bait, which is a pastime of a much smaller scale than Karl’s past adventures hunting and spearing huge Oneblood tuna with his seal companion. This passage emphasizes Karl’s deep, almost primal connection with the water and its creatures: using dead bait and hooks is boring to him perhaps because it requires none of the risk and passion that characterized his past tuna-hunting exploits.
Nevertheless, Karl comes to enjoy this more casual kind of fishing. His changing attitude suggests that a human’s relationship with nature is never set in stone—as nature transforms and ebbs and flows, human attitudes transform with it. And just as the natural world (and the ocean in particular) allows Karl to strengthen his bond to his daughters, that bond allows him to adapt his relationship with the ocean after the loss of his seal.
Snow Quotes
That was it: hide, recover, re-emerge. Nicola hadn’t factored herself or her needs into this plan; that wasn’t her way. Since her days on the deck, cracking open her father’s smile, she had lived by putting others first. Her first instinct was always to help, to shrink back from the front and push others forward. It wasn’t pure selflessness; she drew pleasure from how she could affect others, and when they showed her gratitude she bathed in it, glowing in the knowledge that she, and only she, had made them feel that way.
Related Characters:
Nicola, Charlotte McAllister , Karl (Nicola’s Father)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
145
Explanation and Analysis:
Nicola’s plan to shelter with Charlotte in the stone cabin at Cradle Mountain is one she forms in response to Charlotte’s needs without considering her own comfort. But what she sacrifices through ignoring her own autonomy, she gains in the pleasure she gets from helping Charlotte—just as she has done her whole life in her relationships with others. It’s not that Nicola puts her own happiness aside for the sake of other people’s—it’s that her happiness depends on prioritizing and pleasing others.
Nicola’s joy comes from the reciprocity of a relationship in which she can see the effect of her effort in a loved one’s pleasure. It’s vital for her that a relationship is built on this kind of emotional transaction in which she understands her own value. The passage therefore suggests that a relationship can be an equal and equally respectful one, even when one member of that relationship seems to prioritize the other over themselves.
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Karl (Nicola’s Father) Quotes in Flames
The Flames quotes below are all either spoken by Karl (Nicola’s Father) or refer to Karl (Nicola’s Father). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Salt Quotes
Back at home the girls showed no interest in hunting Onebloods. Instead, he taught them to push hooks through frozen squid and hurl them out into the water, which they loved as much as he found it boring. And through sharing this banal activity with his daughters he somehow developed an affection for the activity itself, and found himself angling off the rocks even when the girls were away in Devonport, casting and catching and occasionally crying, but only when the mist was clear and he could see past the heads towards the tall spires where the seals still hauled out, or so he assumed.
Related Characters:
Karl (Nicola’s Father), Nicola
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
21-22
Explanation and Analysis:
Though Karl tries to encourage his daughters to share his passion for fishing, they enjoy fishing with hooks and bait, which is a pastime of a much smaller scale than Karl’s past adventures hunting and spearing huge Oneblood tuna with his seal companion. This passage emphasizes Karl’s deep, almost primal connection with the water and its creatures: using dead bait and hooks is boring to him perhaps because it requires none of the risk and passion that characterized his past tuna-hunting exploits.
Nevertheless, Karl comes to enjoy this more casual kind of fishing. His changing attitude suggests that a human’s relationship with nature is never set in stone—as nature transforms and ebbs and flows, human attitudes transform with it. And just as the natural world (and the ocean in particular) allows Karl to strengthen his bond to his daughters, that bond allows him to adapt his relationship with the ocean after the loss of his seal.
Snow Quotes
That was it: hide, recover, re-emerge. Nicola hadn’t factored herself or her needs into this plan; that wasn’t her way. Since her days on the deck, cracking open her father’s smile, she had lived by putting others first. Her first instinct was always to help, to shrink back from the front and push others forward. It wasn’t pure selflessness; she drew pleasure from how she could affect others, and when they showed her gratitude she bathed in it, glowing in the knowledge that she, and only she, had made them feel that way.
Related Characters:
Nicola, Charlotte McAllister , Karl (Nicola’s Father)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
145
Explanation and Analysis:
Nicola’s plan to shelter with Charlotte in the stone cabin at Cradle Mountain is one she forms in response to Charlotte’s needs without considering her own comfort. But what she sacrifices through ignoring her own autonomy, she gains in the pleasure she gets from helping Charlotte—just as she has done her whole life in her relationships with others. It’s not that Nicola puts her own happiness aside for the sake of other people’s—it’s that her happiness depends on prioritizing and pleasing others.
Nicola’s joy comes from the reciprocity of a relationship in which she can see the effect of her effort in a loved one’s pleasure. It’s vital for her that a relationship is built on this kind of emotional transaction in which she understands her own value. The passage therefore suggests that a relationship can be an equal and equally respectful one, even when one member of that relationship seems to prioritize the other over themselves.
