72 pages • 2 hours read
Rosanne Parry, Illustr. Mónica ArmiñoA Wolf Called Wander
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Identity within the Context of the Family
For human beings, a person’s role within the family and the level of participation in familial relationships are both highly individualistic and entirely specific to each person’s preferences and inclinations. Wolves, by contrast, are pack animals; their ability to rely upon those who make up their family unit is integral to ensuring their survival. Wolves do not possess the individualistic and often treacherous traits that can drive human individuals to prioritize themselves and their personal objectives over the good of the group.
Lacking the complicated, fallible, and often disappointing interpersonal tendencies of humans, the bond of a wolf pack is a much purer and more cooperative collective, and this dynamic is vividly depicted in the early chapters of A Wolf Called Wander. All the wolves in Wander’s pack are collaborators, and as the pups mature, they grow into an understanding of their own strengths and those of their peers, subordinates, and mates, learning to appreciate the vital role that each wolf must play in order to ensure the collective success of the pack as a whole. Accordingly, all the wolves are motivated by the bonds that they form with one another and by the survival instincts that intrinsically govern their behavioral patterns.
When he is born, Wander’s own willful temperament and his intense love for his family inspire him to become a successful hunter, and he embraces his early aptitude for speed and agility because he knows that these talents will help him to contribute to the pack’s survival. These same ambitions also cause Wander to become upset when Sharp emerges as the most skilled of hunters among their litter of pups, and unfortunately, he does not live with his family long enough to realize how essential his less-central role is in the overall success of the hunt, for urging the elk they to proceed in the correct direction can make all the difference between success and failure.
Despite his disappointment at missing out on the key hunting role, however, Wander’s dedication to the pack’s safety never wavers, and he maintains his loyalty to his pack when other young wolves might have struck out on their own. Although Roseanne Parry employs these concepts as a way to anthropomorphize the lupine protagonist, such instincts for cohesion also serve to preserve and protect real-life packs and the genetic diversity of the species as a whole, for even lone wolves are compelled to find new packs to join rather than embracing a lifetime of lone-wolf status. Because pack organization often dictates that there cannot be more than one breeding male and female per wolf pack, the reintegration of lone wolves into new packs serves to diversify and increase wolf populations. Lone wolves who join new packs can then employ the social skills and bonds that they learned in their youth, forging new connections and passing their knowledge and skills on to future generations.
Over the course of his travels, Wander tries out different roles as they become necessary, and these experiences serve him well when he finally enters a leadership role at the end of the novel. Throughout his journey, Wander’s grief and loneliness overwhelm him, but the farther that Wander travels from his home ground, the more he begins to accept that reunion with his own pack will not be possible. Instead of being defined according to his role within a pack, Wander’s sense of self and purpose plummets because he is forced to define himself as a wolf with no pack at all. He knows what it means to be a wolf, but without the engagement and participation of peers and relatives, he does not experience the security and fulfillment that he once felt when he shared in his own culture with his native community. Wander’s instinct and motivation to survive are thus rooted in his hope that he will one day be able to rediscover the security and love that he once enjoyed as a productive member of a functional pack.
Identity within the Context of the Natural World
In addition to the sense of identity that Wander derives from being a member of his familial pack, he also learns larger lessons from Father about what it means to be a wolf in the wilderness. He learns that each pack has its own dynamics and characteristics; while individual temperaments and personalities define each family unit, broader wolf behavior remains consistent among all members of the species, particularly within the same region.
As pack leader, Father embraces his duty to teach his pups about pack responsibilities and enforce his expectations of how a proper wolf should behave. Thus, like Father himself would, Wander looks with disdain upon the bachelor wolves he finds hunting sheep and calves, for Father’s lessons have taught him that they are functioning outside and beneath the standard set for appropriate wolf behavior. He considers the bachelor wolves to be aberrant, for livestock is not common prey for wolves. While there are wild wolves who will kill and eat domesticated livestock when hungry and desperate, the character of Father is designed to convey that such actions run counter to natural wolf behavior, defiling and debasing the wolf’s spirit and status within the “culture” of life in the wilderness. Parry creates this imaginary stricture against killing cattle to stress the real-life issue of the negative consequences that ensue when wolves and humans interact.
In the Northwest, where wolves like Wander and his family roam, hunters often poison, shoot, or otherwise destroy innocent wolves and their young, usually because a hunter has lost part of a flock to a wolf and therefore assumes that all wolves pose a threat, even ones that have not harmed any livestock. Thus, Parry injects a cautionary note into the overall narrative and outlines for readers the many issues that face wolves in their struggle to survive in a modern world overrun by humans.
The lessons on “wolf culture” that Father imparts can be found sprinkled throughout the narrative of Wander’s solo journey, for the pack leader’s values and perceptions influence many of the young wolf’s actions as he goes in search of a new place to belong. For example, Wander views coyotes as being unsophisticated and unworthy creatures who occupy a much lower status than wolves, primarily due to coyotes’ lack of respect for their environment and for their kills. Thus it becomes clear that Father’s instruction is designed to teach Wander how to carry himself as a citizen of the wild who cultivates a strong, respectful relationship with his pack and his home territory. This dynamic also echoes the sense of belonging and blending with the natural world: a common theme for such environmentally conscious novels. Accordingly, Wander finds a number of ways in which to collaborate with other elements and species in the world around him, for he finds a wealth of opportunities to combine efforts with the raven in pursuit of mutual survival and even goes so far as to protect a newborn foal, for the cohesion of the horse herd reminds him powerfully of the love and protection he once enjoyed as a member of a larger pack. However, although other species might present opportunities for cooperation, as evident from the flocks of ravens who help Father to find prey, and later the raven who remains with Wander for the majority of his journey, no bonds can be more important than those that develop within the pack itself, and thus the survival of the pack becomes the highest of goals for each individual to pursue.
When Wander finally finds his new territory, the decision he makes to settle there is a rational one based upon his understanding that there is an abundance of elk, a diversity of wildlife to support the ecosystem for the foreseeable future, and terrain that is evocative of the upbringing he enjoyed as a pup. Furthermore, the area is free of the markings of any rival packs that might pose a threat to his survival or to his ability to form his own family unit. His decision is also sentimental, in the sense that although the land itself is new to him, it bears a familiarity with his original home, and evokes a sense of belonging even before he has fully settled in it. Thus, Wander ultimately regains a sense of his own identity within the context of the natural world itself.
The Coming-of-Age Narrative
After the loss of Wander’s family, the same early childhood instincts that compelled Wander to become a hunter and provider for his pack are transformed into a drive to become a pack leader like his father. With his early attachments irrevocably severed, he can only satiate his need for community and solidarity by forming his own pack and building strong bonds with the new generations of wolves that he and his future mate will one day produce. Initially, Wander does not specify a desire to become a father of pups of his own, for his desperate loneliness compels him to consider the possibility of joining an existing pack and establishing a new role for himself within that dynamic. However, by the time that he finds himself on the ridgeline watching the birth of the foal, Wander has matured enough to embrace the idea of fathering pups and building a pack of his own. The actions of the head stallion in this herd, who asserts his dominance when his foal is born, speak to Wander’s inner desires, and for the first time, Wander’s interests shift to the new ambition of beginning a family. This shift also changes the balance of his expectations, for only larger packs will have more than one or two breeding pairs, depending upon the characteristics of the group. Thus, Wander transforms from a wolf looking for a home to a wolf confident in his desire to lead.
Over the course of his travels, Wander is forced to engage in behaviors and take actions that he would have rejected under ideal circumstances, and this inspires in him a sense of self-reliance and pride in his ability to do what he must in order to survive and obey the directive to “carry on,” as Father instructed. When he is injured by the powerful kick of the elk’s hoof, he stoops to eating bugs, moths, and other crawlers and even resorts to eating a rattlesnake. When his raven friend leads him to a stream and he mimics the bears in order to catch salmon, he is keenly aware of how deeply his family would disapprove. However, despite the strictures of his upbringing, Wander is proud of himself for having the will to survive and the innovation to try new methods and exceed his own training and expectations. When he finally finds his home ground, he wet-marks his boundaries, and Parry uses the declarative term “Mine!”, which all of the wolves in Wander’s pack used to show ownership. Thus, Wander has passed the ultimate test given him by the unpredictable circumstances of life in the wild, and he has likewise succeeded in honing his strength and endurance in order to found a brand-new pack. Wander no longer worries about being accepted by other wolves or seeking their approval, for from this point forward, he is the one who will approve or deny entry into his own territory.
