Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Island of the Blue Dolphins, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Natural World
Solitude
Friendship
Gender Roles and Survival
Colonialism, Violence, and Indigenous Culture
Summary
Analysis
On this terrible day, the tribe goes from 42 men to only 15, seven of them old. The storm rages for two more days and finally, on the third day, Karana’s tribe buries their dead. They burn the Aleut bodies and spend the next few days in silence. Several villagers discuss taking their canoes to a nearby island, Santa Catalina, but there’s supposedly little water there. Ultimately, everyone decides to stay.
It's a huge blow to Karana’s tribe to lose almost two-thirds of its men. This not only highlights how violent and uncaring the Aleuts were—they left the tribe high and dry, after all—but it also throws the tribe into disarray. Now, they don’t know what to do or how to manage without the men to perform certain tasks.
Themes
The council chooses a new chief, an old man named Kimki. He’s a good man and a good hunter. Once he’s chosen, he announces that since the village has lost the men who build canoes and hunt and fish, women will have to start taking on some of these tasks. People will be upset—but everyone has to pitch in, or the villagers will die. Kimki assigns everyone jobs. Karana and Ulape are tasked with gathering abalone on the rocks, and Ramo is assigned the job of protecting the drying abalone from gulls and wild dogs. The pack of wild dogs on the island has grown, since many domestic dogs joined the pack when their owners died.
Kimki takes a very pragmatic approach here when he assigns some hunting and fishing tasks to women. He understands that this isn’t going to go over well with everyone—having such specific gender roles can be comforting and a source of pride and stability for many. But Kimki also suggests that pride and comfort are much less important when a person’s survival is on the line, and accomplishing these tasks at all is more important than who actually does the hunting and fishing.
Themes
Other women gather “scarlet apples” from cactus bushes, catch fish, and hunt birds. They work so hard that the village actually does better than it did before, when men did all the hunting. Life should be peaceful, but it isn’t. Men resent that the women have taken men’s “rightful” tasks, so they look down on the women. Finally, Kimki reassigns all hunting to men and all gathering to women. There’s already enough food for winter, so this reassignment doesn’t matter much.
As Kimki predicted, reassigning duties that were once men-only doesn’t go over well with some in the tribe. The men find it threatening that the women are able to do better than the men ever did. Moreover, the fact that the women are more successful than the men were shows that hunting and fishing weren’t men’s tasks because men are naturally better at them. Rather, dividing the labor this way just ensured that everything got done.
Themes
But what makes things even worse at Ghalas-at this winter is that all those who died at Coral Cove are still haunting the island. Karana remembers her father all the time, and it’s hard to look after Ramo with no parents. Once people settle into their houses for winter, they grieve for those who died.
Karana implies that she and her neighbors are living amongst ghosts. Their way of life is starting to come to an end, and it’s impossible to go anywhere on the island without remembering how things used to be.
Themes
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When spring arrives, Kimki calls a meeting and announces that he’s going to take a canoe east, where there’s a land far across the sea where the villagers can live. He promises to return for everyone else. Everyone goes to the cove and watches him leave, and then people wonder if he’ll be back before winter—or if he’ll ever come back.
After the Aleuts killed so many of the tribe’s men, it’s becoming clear to Kimki that the tribe can’t continue to function happily and effectively on the island. They’ll need to look elsewhere to find safety and security. Kimki’s actions suggest that the tribe’s way of life coming to an end.
Themes
