For those of you too fond of the weekly teen-pregnancy revelations in US to remember the days when girls only bore awls, Island of the Blue Dolphins is the true-ish! story of a young girl left behind on an island off the coast of California in the mid–1800s when her entire village clears out for the mainland, surviving alone in a far less annoying way than Tom Hanks, even if you remove the whole volleyball thing from the equation.
Which brings me to the following question…which is stranger? The propensity of actors, when cast in a film depicting an ancient culture, for speaking in English accents, irrespective of the country being portrayed (see Troy, Rome, Hunt for Red October), or for all Native-American characters in novels to maintain an internal narrative of affectless formality, occasionally peppered with quietly authoritative reverse syntax? (To wit: “He was small for one who had lived so many moons, but quick as a cricket…. Below me lay the cove.”)
But I forgive Karana for that, because her father and brother are totally about to die. In fact, it’s striking how quickly all the men in this book are killed off. (Probably because if they were left in the narrative they would have just crowded it out by telling Karana it’s bad luck for women to use weapons and whatever, but more on that later.) Here’s how it goes down: Karana’s father, Chief Chowig, totally pulls a boner by giving his secret name to the Aleuts, who have come to the island to hunt seal. Chief Chowig also refuses to share his fresh fish with the visitors, and when it’s time to go, Captain Orlov, the Aleuts’ Russian compatriot, starts a huge fight and most of the men of the village are killed.
Events thereafter lead up to one of my favorite encapsulations of the female condition, ever:
Life in the village should have been peaceful, but it was not. The men said that the women had taken the tasks that rightfully were theirs and now that they had become hunters the men looked down upon them. There was much trouble over this until Kimki decreed that the work would again be divided—henceforth the men would hunt and the women harvest. Since there was already ample food to last through winter, it no longer mattered who hunted.
Note to self: always be so competent that by the time men figure out we’ve completely obviated them, it won’t matter.
Next comes the horrible death of her brother Ramo, which occurs after both of them are left alone on the island because—OF COURSE—as the entire tribe is about to ditch the island for the mainland, Ramo goes back to get his special spear, and Karana has to jump into the ocean and swim back to take care of him. (When I was younger, every time I read this scene, I suffered a nearly unbearable anxiety attack at the thought that Karana would drown even though I knew there would be no book then.) Unfortunately for Ramo, in an equally anxiety-provoking way, he is killed off immediately by a pack of wild dogs.
And now you are just dying for Karana. But don’t worry—this ties into my next vaguely holiday-related point. Girls don’t really want to play with dolls; they want to perform tasks. (They do still care about clothes, however—after she plunges into the sea to swim back to Ramo, she says: “The only thing that made me angry was that my beautiful skirt of yucca fibers, which I had worked on so hard, was ruined.”) Because after she is left to fend for herself, Karana displays a dizzying competence that might even trump Ma’s comprehensive mastery over the pig.
She gathers abalones and dries them like a champ. She kills a bunch of wild dogs and tames another one. She builds a huge fence out of whalebones and catches a billion sai sai fish to burn for light. She builds canoes, she outwits Aleut visitors, she almost manages to kill a bull elephant (hippo?) and a devilfish (octopus!). She is alone, so alone that she winds up catching wild animals and snaring them for company, thinking how funny her boy-crazy sister would find the “children” she’s managed to gather.
One night she paddles into a cave filled with creepy figures with abalone-shell eyes made by her ancestors, and a skeleton, and is forced to spend the night when the tide comes in. She does not a) freak out or b) make a daring escape. She just makes peace as the tide comes in. Her Aleut dog, Rontu, who is with her for years and years, dies. (“‘Rontu!’ I cried. ‘Oh, Rontu!’ I buried him on the headland.” It’s horrible.) A ship comes back for her, and she misses the ship and they leave without her AGAIN. Are you kidding me?
One of the saddest parts of the narrative occurs toward the end, as Karana tells us how she fills her days alone:
During the time I was taming the birds, I made another skirt. The one I had made of yucca fibers softened in water and braided into twine. I made it just like the others, with folds running lengthwise. It was open on both sides and hung to my knees. The belt I made of sealskin which could be tied in a knot. I also made a pair of sandals from sealskin for walking over the dunes when the sun was hot, or just to be dressed up when I wore my new skirt of yucca twine.
Often I would put on the skirt and the sandals and walk along the cliff with Rontu. Sometimes I made a wreath of flowers and fastened it to my hair…. I also made a wreath for Rontu’s neck, which he did not like. Together we would walk along the cliff looking at the sea, and though the white men’s ship did not return that spring, it was a happy time. The air smelled of flowers and birds sang everywhere.
Of course, we know this cannot stand. Soon, missionaries are going to come to bring her over to the mainland, where, like some prisoner falsely convicted and freed too late, she finds herself out of step with the world she doesn’t even remember why she tried to get to. (Sorry, you have to read Zia for this whole part.) Everything she’s missed is lost to her. Just as girls like her are lost to us.
BOOK REPORT
Little House in the Big Woods
By Laura Ingalls Wilder 1932
Fresh Kills
Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
Did you know that a black physician, Dr. George A. Tann, saves the lives of the entire Ingalls family from a bad attack of Fever ’n’ Ague, a.k.a. malaria, in Little House on the Prairie?
I state this not because this is the most salient point at hand—or even a point, really—but I think letting just one out of the thousand, strange moments that have stuck with me my entire life from the entire Little House series is as good a way as any to enter into a discussion of The Most Important Work of Our Time.
But before I get into it, let me lay some still more super-charged imagery on you. Blacking on wallpaper. Black-eyed papoose. Sugar snow. Vanity cakes. Water splashed on freezing plants. Bad wells. Real white sugar, wrapped in brown paper. A tin cup and two pennies. Sprigging. Jigging. Jack, the brindle dog. Baths in used bathwater. School for the Blind. Common Taters on the Axe.
I’m just going to end there, because if you remember that last one, you deserve some sort of valedictory bonnet. But my point is, more so than the Madeleine, the Little House series (which, at age 8, I used to take to bed on the weekends and read, propped on a pillow, in its entirety, like some bonbon-popping lady of leisure), is a wholly sensual experience for the reader, frontier porn for the underaged. Those schooled in its world (said school being, of course, a clean, cozy room with fresh-cut planks, sun shining through its real-glass windows, a metal object bolted to the teacher’s desk, a mechanical pencil sharpener) are forever molded by its voluptuous embrace.
The Big Woods lays the groundwork for all the sublimated sensuality that comes thereafter, including Mary and Laura’s epic, savage rivalry. Speaking of which, I have to lead with the fact that I had forgotten quite how much of The Big Woods is devoted to animals and the disambiguation thereof. That is, my friend, the pig’s bladder. That Mary and Laura are bat about. Because, when you were 8, could you think of anything more fun than playing with the bladder of a freshly slaughtered pig? Why, that might be even more fun than getting to watch Ma skim off cracklings from the drained fat, then boil a whole hog’s head and chop the meat to make headcheese! But you know what it could never be more fun than? ROASTING A PIG’S TAIL.
That would be, and mark the quotes, “such fun that that it was hard to play fair, taking turns.” Even before it was cool enough to devour entirely down to the bones, you and your sister would have to take turns tasting it—licking it!!!—as it cracked and boiled on a spit, and burn your tongues.
But I could go on forever about the deer, bear, muskrat, mink, foxes, wolves, and other cadavers bloodily splayed, like so many credulous Trojans, across the narrative. So I will just note that, to be fair, Pa is a trapper, another fact I had forgotten while I was wondering whether he just kept wandering off all day so he wouldn’t have to hang in the house with Ma, molding butter. That’s why it makes complete sense that the chapter “The Long Rifle” begins with the wholesome image of him teaching the girls to make bullets.
But in Wisconsin’s big woods, there is more to life than slaughtering, chopping, trapping, molding, and making beds. There is also thrusting hollow sticks into the mighty trees, letting the succulent sap drip out, then boiling it until it can be consumed in all its rich, slow-cooked delight. Because it is time for the maple-sugaring dance at Grandma’s! It’s going to take all of my strength not to type the passage below in its entirety—it’s taking all my strength to not type the book for you in its entirety—so bear with me as I recount Laura watching her Aunts Docia and Ruby get dressed:
Laura sat on their bed and watched them comb out their long hair and part it carefully…they had washed their hands and faces and scrubbed them well with soap, at the wash-basin on the bench in the kitchen. They had used store soap, not the slimy, soft, dark brown soap that Grandma made and kept in a big jar…. They fussed a long time with their front hair…They brushed it so smooth on each side of the straight white part that it shone like silk in the lamplight. The little puff on each side shone too, and the ends were coiled and twisted neatly under the big knot in the back.
Then they pulled on their beautiful white stockings, that they had knit of fine cotton thread in lacy, openwork patterns, and they buttoned up their best shoes….
“Caroline says Charles could span her waist with his two hands, when they were married.”
Then Aunt Ruby and Aunt Docia put on their flannel petticoats and their plain petticoats and their stiff, starched white petticoats with knitted lace all around the flounces. And then they put on their beautiful dresses.
Aunt Docia’s dress was a sprigged print, dark blue, with sprigs of red flowers and green leaves thick upon it. The basque was buttoned down the front with black buttons which looked so exactly like juicy big blackberries that Laura wanted to taste them. Aunt Ruby’s dress was wine-colored calico, covered all over with a feathery pattern in a lighter wine color. It buttoned with gold-colored buttons, and every button had a little castle and a tree carved in it.
Aunt Docia’s pretty white collar was fastened in front with a large round cameo pin, which had a lady’s head on it. [Talk about disambiguation.] But Aunt Ruby pinned her collar with a red rose made of sealing wax. She had made it herself, on the head of a darning needle which had a broken eye, so it couldn’t be used as a needle anymore.
I am so sorry. But obviously, I had to get the buttons with the whole castle carved on them in there.
But, as in the case of all charged imagery, the sprigged dresses and molded bullets would be all for naught did they not hide the great conflict in the narrative—viz, Laura’s despair that everyone thinks Mary is prettier than she is. While Mary’s curls are “golden and beautiful,” Laura’s hair is “dirty and brown.” The storekeeper tells Ma and Pa that Mary is pretty—he says nothing about Laura. Laura gathers too many rocks by the shores of a lake and tears out her pocket—Mary is clean and neat and keeps her hands nicely folded in her lap. (Of course she does, the fucking bitch!)
Across the entire series, one of the major themes is Laura coming into her own alongside that shadow—somewhat mitigated, of course, by the fact that Mary goes blind in book three or four—and growing into her own marriage, which closes with its own books, The First Four Years and These Happy Golden Years. (One of them you have to buy outside the boxed set, cheapo.) But the intimations of the conflict are laid out over and over again—most poignantly, I think, when Laura has slapped Mary for telling her “Golden hair is lots prettier than brown,” and been whipped. Tearily crawling onto Pa’s lap afterward, she asks, “You don’t like golden hair better than brown, do you?”
And do you know what Pa says?
“Well, Laura, my hair is brown.”
Going off to weep now. Tell me when the bladder balloon is prepared for play.
BOOK REPORT
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
By Elizabeth George Speare 1958
Stock Characters
On a morning in mid-April, the brigantine Dolphin left the open sea, sailed briskly across the Sound to the wide mouth of the Connecticut River and into Saybrook Harbor. Kit Tyler had been on the forecastle deck since daybreak, standing close to the rail, staring hungrily at the first sight of land in five weeks.
“There’s Connecticut colony,” a voice spoke in her ear. “You’ve come a long way to see it.”
I’ve only read The Witch of Blackbird Pond something like 34 times, and the yellow spine of the cover I had—a dark, moony head rising up mistily from a swamp—is ineluctably seared in its place in my memory of my 8-year-old bookshelf. Still, whenever I fail to reread it every few months, it hodgepodges itself in with the tar-and-feathering scene in Scott O’Dell’s Sarah Bishop, The Crucible, and a TV movie where a young girl accused of witchcraft gets felt up by her examining judge.
It may be that my poor brain has only so much room for Revolutionary-grade persecution and does-the-witch-float tests, but it never matters. Because upon reread, like some annoying little brother who keeps repeating everything you say exactly as you say it, my memory keeps catching up with the text in front of me until the entire text becomes but one self-pleasuring session of déjà vu.
Viz: The Dolphin! (Always ital’d.) “Turn back, Captain! T’will be an easy enough thing to catch.” Tarring and feathering. (Shit. Wrong book.) A blueberry corncake and a kitten: Hannah’s cure for all ills. Diamond-paned windows. A hornbook. A green silk dress. A soft blue shawl. A red ear of corn. Staggering in from the cold to put your head in Mercy’s lap. Sprinkling the floor with sand. Her thin face transformed by the bonnet. Prudence Cruff. Nat. Goody Cruff! Stocks. A dirty blanket thrust through an opening. Kit! Frippery! Quakers! Livestock frozen in place! The Dolphin! Nat! Kit! Kit! Nat!
But back to the story. Kit Tyler, orphan, is the kind of character flap-copy writers live to call “headstrong.” Raised in Barbados by her grandfather after the death of her parents, she has come to colonial Wethersfield, Connecticut, after his death to live with her aunt Rachel, her mother’s sister, whom she’s never met. Raised reading Shakespeare with her grandfather and frolicking in the blue waters under swaying palm trees, she’s been forced to sell off all the property and its attendant hundred slaves—even, as she laments, her own “Negro girl”—to pay off her grandfather’s debts and gain passage on the ship.
This display of wealth, as you can imagine, goes over tremendously with the Puritan settlers, whom she manages to horrify before even setting foot on land when she dives overboard to rescue a young girl’s doll:
“Such water!” she gasped. “I never dreamed water could be so cold!”
She shook back her wet hair, her cheeks glowing.
But her laughter died away at the sight of all of their faces. Shock and horror and unmistakable anger stared back at her. Even Nathaniel’s young face was dark with rage.
“You must be daft,” the woman hissed. “To jump into the river and ruin those clothes!”
Kit tossed her head. “Bother the clothes! They’ll dry. Besides, I have plenty of others.”
“Then you might have had a thought for somebody else!” snapped Nat, slapping the water out of his dripping breeches. “These are the only clothes I have.”
Kit! Shhhhhh!
That’s your love interest! But don’t worry—as a narrative convention to prevent us from realizing he’s your love interest too soon, the author is going to make him torment you up to the penultimate page. Here he is, like, two pages later:
“I’ll wager you’re wishing you’d never left Barbados,” he said. “’Twas unfair of me to tease you.”
“How I envied you!” she exclaimed. “To get into that water and away from this filthy ship for even a moment!”
In a split second a squall darkened Nat’s blue eyes. “Filthy—the Dolphin?”
“Oh,” she laughed impatiently, “I know you’re forever scrubbing. But that stable smell! I’ll never get it out of my hair for as long as I live!”
Nat’s indignation found vent in scorn. “Maybe you think it would smell prettier with a hold full of human bodies, half of them rotting in their chains before anyone knew they were dead!”
Don’t fret, Kit, once you hit land to join the somber household of your aunt Rachel, her husband, Matthew, and their daughters, Judith and Mercy, this whole scrubbing thing is about to loom large enough in your life that you’ll forget about Nat for a while. Here’s Kit on her first day in her new household:
By the end of the first day the word useful had taken on alarming meaning. Work in that household never ceased, and it called for skill and patience, qualities Kit did not seem to possess. There was meat to be chopped, and vegetables to prepare for midday meal. The pewter mugs had to be scoured with reeds and fine sand. There was a great kettle of soap boiling over a fire just behind the house, and all day long Judith and her mother took turns stirring it with a long stick…. Kit tried to keep a gingerly distance from the kettle…. Her stirring became more and more half-hearted till Judith snatched the stick in exasperation. “It will lump on you,” she scolded, “and you can just blame yourself if we have to use lumpy soap all summer.”
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