Island of the Blue Dolphins

Karana does not touch the necklace, and sleeps on the headland that night. The next morning, she returns to the ravine and waits for Tutok. The Aleut girl sings merrily as she approaches the cave but falls silent when she sees that it is empty. Satisfied that Tutok sincerely wishes to be friends, Karana dons the necklace. She introduces herself as Won-a-pa-lei rather than Karana because she does not wish to reveal her secret name. Each day, Tutok visits Karana at the cave, and the two girls spend hours teaching each other words in their respective languages and laughing together. Karana tells Tutok her secret name on the third day and spends five nights making a circlet of seashells for her. The Aleut girl hugs her when she receives the gift, and Karana is so gratified by her friend’s reaction that she forgets “how sore [her] fingers were from boring the holes in the hard shells” (138).

When Tutok’s visits suddenly stop, Karana goes to Coral Cove and sees that the Aleuts are readying for departure. She prepares a portion for Tutok when she cooks dinner that night even though she knows her friend will not come. The next day, Karana sees that the Aleut ship is gone. Initially, she feels relieved that she can return to her house, but then remembers Tutok’s voice and the way “her black eyes [squinted] closed when she laughed” (140). Even with the ruckus of Rontu’s barking and the crying of birds, the island seems quiet without her friend.

Among the wounded otters left behind by the Aleuts, Karana sees many creatures that cannot survive and kills them to end their suffering. She also finds an injured young otter whose eyes are “so large from fear and pain that [she] could see [her] reflection in them” (141). She places the young otter in a tide pool and brings it fish every day. She names the otter Mon-a-nee, meaning “Little Boy with Large Eyes” (143). Storms prevent Karana from fishing for a few days, and she is sad to see that Mon-a-nee is gone the next time she returns to the tide pool.

Karana has to look for food again since she threw away her winter’s supply of abalone. She also busies herself by making a new string for her fishing spear and earrings to match the necklace from Tutok. Karana misses her friend and has imaginary conversations with her.

When spring returns, Karana’s birds Tainor and Lurai build a nest and hatch two fledglings, whom she also tames. She also takes in a young gull with a broken leg. With her five birds and Rontu, the yard of her home “seemed a happy place” (146), but Karana is still pained by loneliness. She misses Tutok, wonders if her older sister Ulape has children now, and reflects on how different her brood of animals is compared to the children she “always wished to have” (146).

Karana replenishes her store of abalone in case the Aleuts return. One day, she sees a group of otters playing in the kelp near the reef where she gathers shellfish. One of the otters follows her canoe, and she recognizes it as Mon-a-nee. The otter later brings two pups to meet Karana. Realizing that her friend is a mother, Karana changes the otter’s name to Won-a-nee, which means “Girl with the Large Eyes” (148). Throughout the spring and summer, Karana returns to the reef and watches Won-a-nee teaching her children skills, such as how to open shellfish with rocks. Befriending Won-a-nee and her pups changes Karana, and she resolves never to hunt animals again. She knows that her people, particularly her father, would laugh at her if they heard her promise, but she sees all animals as either current or potential friends.

The Aleuts never return to the island, but Karana stores shellfish, new weapons, and her canoe in the cave under the headland so she will be ready if they do come back. Many years pass, and she rarely thinks of the Aleut hunters or “the white men who had said they would come back, but did not come” (151). One summer, she stops carving notches to keep track of the passage of time. During that same summer, Rontu goes to the cave that used to be his lair. When Karana finds him there, he is alone and his breathing is faint. He passes away the next morning. Karana buries him on the headland and decorates the grave with flowers, colorful stones, and a stick they used to play fetch with.

Karana rarely leaves her house during the winter after Rontu’s death. She sees a young dog that she recognizes as Rontu’s son with the other dogs. She tries to catch him using snares when spring comes, but fails. She drugs the pack into falling asleep with xuchal, a mixture of “ground-up sea shells and wild tobacco” (156). She carries Rontu’s son to her house and leashes him in the yard with some food and water. Karana quickly befriends her new dog, whom she names Rontu-Aru, meaning “Rontu’s son.” Rontu-Aru’s thick fur, yellow eyes, and boisterous disposition remind her of his father, and his companionship brings her comfort. However, she finds her thoughts drifting to Tutok and Ulape more and more, and she often hears “their voices in the wind and [...] in the waves that lapped softly against the canoe” (157).

On a day so hot that “the sea shimmered with red light” (158), Karana covers her canoe in a fresh layer of pitch as she does every start of spring. She rests on the beach and awakens to a rumbling sound, as the most enormous wave she’s ever seen moves toward the island. Terrified, she makes a desperate dash to the cliff and tries to climb above the water’s reach. A second massive wave rises from the sea, and the two waves collide like giants locked in battle. The second wave strikes the cliff and almost carries Karana away, but she manages to hold on until the water recedes. Because it is too dark to find her way home, she spends the night at the base of the cliff.

The next morning, the beach is covered with the bodies of dead fish, shellfish, and even a pair of small whales. Karana returns home, where a relieved Rontu-Aru welcomes her back. She spends most of the day sleeping to recover from her ordeal. When she wakes, the island feels strange and ominously quiet, “as though it were waiting for something terrible to happen” (162). An earthquake strikes the island that evening, hurling Karana and Rontu-Aru to the ground. They huddle together in their house all night as the island shakes around them, but the rock on the headland holds fast, and the next day dawns calm and quiet.

The massive waves washed away all of the food and weapons Karana stored in the cave under the cliff—as well as both of her canoes. She recovers parts of the canoes, gathers driftwood, and spends most of the spring constructing a new canoe.

While gathering seaweed for a fire, Karana spies a ship “in the deep shadows cast by the clouds” (166). This vessel looks different from previous ships, so she doesn’t know who has come to her island or why. A man comes ashore, sees the fire and canoe Karana left on the beach, and calls to her. Karana goes to her house and gathers her things. She thinks about her ancestors and the joyful memories she made in her home, but decides to go to the ship because she wishes “to be where people lived, to hear their voices and their laughter” (168). She hurries back to the beach. However, the man already rejoined his companions on the ship because a storm is rising, and they do not notice Karana even though she wades out into the sea and shouts to them.

The ship returns two years later. Karana watches the men camp and cannot stop thinking about the man who called to her two years ago. In the morning, she dons her otter cape, her cormorant skirt, and the necklace from Tutok. Even though she has grown up and is not a girl anymore, she uses clay to draw the facial markings that indicate she is unmarried. Karana cannot picture the new life that awaits her, distinctly remember her people, or recall the seasons that she spent alone on the island. The years blur together for Karana until they are “all one, a tight feeling in [her] breast and nothing more” (170).

Three men, including a Christian clergyman wearing a robe and a rosary, come to Karana’s house. They do not share a common language, so she communicates with them through gestures. The men sew a long, makeshift blue dress for her out of trousers, which she dislikes because it is hot and scratchy. However, Karana wears the dress with a smile and puts away her beautiful cormorant skirt for later. The men came to the island to hunt otters, but Karana feigns incomprehension and does not tell them where to find her friends. She asks the men about the ship that carried her people away, but they do not understand her. (Later, in Karana’s new home of Mission Santa Barbara, a man named Father Gonzales tells her that the previous ship sank soon after carrying her people to his country and that there was no other vessel to send for her.)

After spending 10 days in Coral Cove, the ship of would-be otter hunters sails east with Karana, Rontu-Aru, and two of her birds aboard. Karana looks back at the Island of the Blue Dolphins and remembers Rontu, Won-a-nee, and “all the happy days” (173). Dolphins swim before the ship as though leading Karana toward her new home.