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Allen Gibson
Karl is Nicola’s father and Louise’s wife. When he meets and bonds with a seal pup, he begins a precious, decades-long partnership which involves the two of them hunting enormous Oneblood tuna together. This relationship—and its traumatic end, which comes when a pod of orca whales kills the seal—emphasizes the power of nature to equally delight and terrify humans who witness it. Though Karl’s relationship with Nicola is somewhat detached, her fond memories of him smiling at her suggest that he represents a kind of stable, sturdy love for her—one that she seems to attempt to replicate in her relationship with Charlotte.
Karl (Nicola’s Father) Quotes in Flames
The Flames quotes below are all either spoken by Karl (Nicola’s Father) or refer to Karl (Nicola’s Father). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Salt
Quotes
Back at home the girls showed no interest in hunting Onebloods. Instead, he taught them to push hooks through frozen squid and hurl them out into the water, which they loved as much as he found it boring. And through sharing this banal activity with his daughters he somehow developed an affection for the activity itself, and found himself angling off the rocks even when the girls were away in Devonport, casting and catching and occasionally crying, but only when the mist was clear and he could see past the heads towards the tall spires where the seals still hauled out, or so he assumed.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Snow
Quotes
That was it: hide, recover, re-emerge. Nicola hadn’t factored herself or her needs into this plan; that wasn’t her way. Since her days on the deck, cracking open her father’s smile, she had lived by putting others first. Her first instinct was always to help, to shrink back from the front and push others forward. It wasn’t pure selflessness; she drew pleasure from how she could affect others, and when they showed her gratitude she bathed in it, glowing in the knowledge that she, and only she, had made them feel that way.
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Karl (Nicola’s Father) Quotes in Flames
The Flames quotes below are all either spoken by Karl (Nicola’s Father) or refer to Karl (Nicola’s Father). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Salt
Quotes
Back at home the girls showed no interest in hunting Onebloods. Instead, he taught them to push hooks through frozen squid and hurl them out into the water, which they loved as much as he found it boring. And through sharing this banal activity with his daughters he somehow developed an affection for the activity itself, and found himself angling off the rocks even when the girls were away in Devonport, casting and catching and occasionally crying, but only when the mist was clear and he could see past the heads towards the tall spires where the seals still hauled out, or so he assumed.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Snow
Quotes
That was it: hide, recover, re-emerge. Nicola hadn’t factored herself or her needs into this plan; that wasn’t her way. Since her days on the deck, cracking open her father’s smile, she had lived by putting others first. Her first instinct was always to help, to shrink back from the front and push others forward. It wasn’t pure selflessness; she drew pleasure from how she could affect others, and when they showed her gratitude she bathed in it, glowing in the knowledge that she, and only she, had made them feel that way.
