Sharks In The Time Of Saviors

“But the shark was holding you gently, do you understand? It was holding you like you were made of glass, like you were its child. They brought you straight at me, the shark that was holding you carrying its head up, out of the water, like a dog.”

Malia describes the miraculous event that leads her to believe Nainoa is a vessel of the gods. The idea that a shark, the fiercest of predators, could show compassion toward a human dramatically disrupts the natural order. The shark motif recurs throughout the novel, including references to gods who manifest as sharks.

“He’s some kind of prodigy, the teachers were saying, and Mom and Dad like the sun when teachers talked about me. They’d started to say I was something special. Even right where Dean and Kaui could hear.”

At an early age, Nainoa knows he is his parents’ favorite child because of his gifted intellect and healing powers. However, his favored status puts pressure on him to meet unrealistic expectations. It also breeds resentment from his siblings that erodes the family’s bonds with each other.

“Every morning gazelles gotta run faster than the fastest lion or they going get eaten. Every morning lions gotta run faster than the slowest gazelle or they going starve. […] There’s no gazelle in me, I don’t do the scared running.”

Dean knows his physical abilities are his main asset. In this passage he compares himself to a swift lion. However, his rivalry with his younger brother only pushes him to excel for a short while. In the end, he is distracted by drugs and loses momentum in his pursuit of his basketball dream.

“Customers came and went, I could hear my mom and Trish talking with ’um, you could tell when it was a local because there was plenty laughs and names of cousins and grandmas rolling around all relaxed, but when it was haoles usually they were like, Do you know what time the Arizona Memorial opens, or How do I get to Sea Life Park from here. And Mom and Trish answer but you could tell they wanted to be like, Everyone brown is not your tour guide.”

This passage, which takes place in a grocery store where Malia works, illustrates the resentment that some local Hawaiians feel about the tourist industry that has flooded the islands with outsiders but has not benefited them. Malia is the most vocal in expressing dislike for “haoles,” the locals’ derogatory term for white visitors or non-Hawaiian residents. However, all the main characters express similar sentiments. The clash between local culture and outside forces is a major theme in the novel.

“And so I can tell you: sometimes I believe none of this would have happened if we’d stayed on the Big Island, where the gods are still alive. Fire goddess Pele with her unyielding strength, birthing the land again and again in lava, exhaling her sulfur breath across the sky.”

Malia believes the gods thrive in the unspoiled landscapes of the Big Island. She apparently sees O‘ahu as too spoiled by the gods of tourist money to host the ancient spirits. She thinks if the family had stayed on the Big Island, the gods would have protected them. At the end, in Part 4, titled “Revival,” the family ends up back on the Big Island.

“It was what I believed at first: That you were made of the gods, that you would be a new legend, enough to change all the things that hurt Hawai‘i. [...] With shame now I see that could never have been the case. But I remember when I was especially full of faith.”

Malia regrets that she expected too much of Nainoa. She always retains the belief that he has special gifts, but she realizes it was wrong to expect a child to be the savior of the family, let alone Hawai‘i. This passage occurs early in the novel, so it foreshadows revelations about Nainoa to come.

“I was the dog at the very end. [...] I was running on this bright road. Paws ticking into the mud, my body this bouncing knot of muscles. It was like I was dumb with happiness, I don’t know… I ran and ran and ran, but everything got weaker and weaker, until I was just… floating into darkness.”

Nainoa describes feeling the pain of a dying dog. This passage shows both his empathic abilities and his close connection to animals, two recurring themes in the novel. Such empathic moments often drain him with their intensity and cause him to want to be normal, but he is still driven to save any distressed animal or person he encounters.

“Goodbye old kings goodbye old gods goodbye old laws goodbye old power goodbye limits.”

Dean celebrates his new life in Spokane, where a basketball scholarship has him dreaming of the NBA. Bidding the gods farewell is his way of saying that he has chosen the mainland over Hawai‘i. Malia’s obsession with the gods has clearly made them a presence in her children’s lives, even if they do not share her passion for them.

“Back in Hawai‘i, all everyone wanted was for me to believe in Noa, to raise him up. Like my job was to be his keeper, to be second place and help him get to the finish line. Hate to break it to you, but I don’t fit in second place.”

This passage vividly illustrates the effects of the sibling rivalry within the Flores family and of the parents’ favoritism toward Nainoa. At first, it is a motivating force for Dean, who is at the top of his game in this passage, having just received a basketball scholarship. However, possibly because his rivalry with Nainoa caused him to push himself too hard, he later crashes as his old drug habit reemerges.

“Howbout the party in me started small and got bigger, just a little here and there and then epic, all the time epic, blackout epic [...] Howbout those days I was missing the beach bad and wanted to bring all the aloha back.”

Dean admits that too much partying led to the end of his basketball dreams. However, it is also clear that the island’s enduring hold on him played a role in his overindulging. This passage starkly contrasts with his earlier celebration of his new life on the mainland.

“The more I understood what we were made of, the more everyone I’d touch stayed inside me, still crying out, showing me their injuries over and over and over and over and over.”

Nainoa describes his empathic powers. After a healing session, he often collapses in exhaustion from absorbing the essence of the injured person or animal. It is one of the reasons he comes to regret his gift.

“How long was I stupid enough to believe we were indestructible? But that’s the problem with the present, it’s never the thing you’re holding, only the thing you’re watching, later, from a distance so great the memory might as well be a spill of stars outside a window at twilight.”

The present and past intermingle in the novel because the main characters tell the story from some unspecified time in the future. As a result, even when a character, in this case Nainoa, seems to be doing well, the text contains foreshadowing of calamities to come. The characters also express regrets in the present because of events that have not yet happened, creating anticipation.

“I am on an island in a dark ocean you will never be able to cross.”

Nainoa describes the lonely feeling of having a supernatural healing gift that no one understands, including himself. When that gift fails him and costs the life of a pregnant woman, he is isolated in his grief. His gift drives him to try to save everyone, but in the end, it is too heavy a burden for him to carry.

“I remembered Sandy Beach, the waves pitching up into sucking walls of water striped through with different shades of glassy blue, the concrete smack of the waves coming down but me and Dean diving deep, holding our breath, our skin hot and brown from the sun, our skeletons accepting what the tide did to us.”

In their darkest moments, Nainoa and his family always turn to nature. In this passage Nainoa remembers an easier, more innocent period in his life, spent swimming with his brother Dean before his prodigy took over and complicated everything. These memories result in the islands calling him home.

“When our language, ‘Olelo Hawai‘i, was outlawed, so our gods went, so prayers went, so ideas went, so the island went.”

Malia mourns the cultural elements that colonization took away from Hawai‘i. Her reverence for the old kingdom of Hawai‘i motivates much of her actions in the novel. However, she eventually realizes that while her son Nainoa is gifted, he is not strong enough to bring back the world of the old gods.

“All the branches bend away rather than claw, the mud firms itself for my feet, the mosquitoes scatter rather than swarm. Every step I take, I bounce back stronger and lighter [...] This is where I should have been all along, I should have stayed in the islands, worked harder to listen. What did I think I could accomplish alone, trying to mend broken bodies on the mainland?”

At this point, the islands have won the culture war in Nainoa’s mind. The land has a healing effect on him at a time when he is depressed over his failure to save the injured pregnant woman. He ends up dying in the valley, but he is fulfilling the destiny that he mentions earlier.

“I’ve learned that laughter is the first wall he puts up against the hurt of the world.”

Malia describes Augie’s mask of humor. Throughout the novel he tells jokes and laughs at his own humor, but he is rarely a happy person. In fact, Augie comes across as a weak figure through much of the novel. He even shuts down completely after Nainoa’s death, but Washburn revives him at the end.

“On Christmas I call again to talk. It’s gotten harder with my family now. Each of us with our own language of death and grieving and no avenue for translation.”

Kaui describes how Nainoa’s death affects each family member differently. Because of the different points of view in each chapter, the reader can see how each family member is resolving sibling rivalry, unrealistic expectations, etc. Kaui is hit even harder by loss because she also loses Van around the same time.

“Picture this, the mother and the father still living after you’re lost, where every day feels like a fog: no way forward, no way back, no idea which is which, everywhere the cold heavy colorless feeling of floating, alone in the middle of nothing.”

Malia uses the third-person perspective to express her grief over Nainoa’s death. It is as if the only way she can stand the pain is to be out of her body, to think of it happening to someone else. As in other chapters of the book, she addresses Nainoa directly.

“Now it’s just my hands. The Earth. The sweet stink of chicken shit streaming in the soil. Tang of clipped grass, the heat of growth coming off the field.”

Kaui likes working with her hands. She is an avid rock climber and is studying to be an engineer. However, Nainoa’s death causes her to reevaluate her life, and she discovers her calling working on a local farm on the Big Island.

“And all the while him having to figure out his abilities, the gods and what they wanted or whatever. The path he was supposed to take. The more I talk about it the more I realize he was probably way lonely. Lonely in a way that never made sense for me until I was in lockup. [...] if the one thing you are, the part you always figured would be your best, if that gets taken away [...] The next day it’s like you’re carrying around your whole future like a dead body.”

Dean resolves his sibling rivalry with Nainoa by realizing how much they were alike. They both suffer trying to figure out their paths in life. In addition, they both abandon their best talents.

“[W]hole farms they were building, just like us. [...] They’d been called, too, is what they said. That same voice, the one that came to me like a hula, that came through Dad like a river. All the people that came to us had been hearing it.”

Toward the end of the novel, Kaui believes that she and other local Hawaiians are answering a calling to create local farms. This back-to-the-land healing theme dominates the novel’s last chapters. In addition, the callings motif increases in frequency toward the end.

“He never was a superhero, Dean. [...] That was the problem. No more saviors, okay? This is just life.”

Kaui is always the most skeptical family member regarding Nainoa’s supposed supernatural abilities. In this passage she infers that the high expectations placed on him led to his demise. Kaui seems to possess a more realistic and grounded outlook on life than the other characters.