The pink room symbolizes Miyax’s idealized perception of non-indigenous American culture. After Miyax (who is Inuit) moves to Mekoryuk to attend school, she starts to exchange letters with Amy Pollack, a 12-year-old girl who lives in San Francisco. In her letters, Amy enchants Miyax with vivid descriptions of city life in San Francisco. At the end of each letter, Amy begs Miyax to come stay with her, promising that Miyax will have a pink room all to herself when she arrives. Miyax imagines running away to San Francisco and staying in the pink room in Amy’s house to escape her own life, which becomes even more unbearable after she relocates to Barrow to marry an abusive boy named Daniel. Although Miyax once rejected assimilating into non-indigenous society, she now sees the promised pink room as a symbol of the better life she could have in the more modernized continental U.S.
After Daniel assaults her, Miyax flees Barrow. She plans to board a ship at Point Hope that will take her to San Francisco, but the plan falls apart when she gets lost on the way there. At first, Miyax fantasizes about San Francisco and the pink room to remain hopeful as she struggles to survive the Arctic tundra’s harsh conditions. But her attitude changes after she witnesses two gussak (white) hunters shoot and murder her wolf friend, Amaroq, from an airplane. Miyax associates Amaroq’s cruel and senseless murder with gussak people’s immoral greed. After Amaroq’s death, Miyax can only envision the pink room in Amy’s house as “red with [Amaroq’s] blood.” Miyax’s altered vision of the pink room symbolizes her disillusionment with non-indigenous culture. Amaroq’s death makes her realize that she cannot remain loyal to her Inuit culture if she embraces fantasies of assimilating into mainstream American society. The pink room thus transforms from a symbol of possibility and hope to a reminder of how non-indigenous people have killed and degraded the people, values, and customs she holds dear.
The Pink Room Quotes in Julie of the Wolves
As the months passed, the letters from Amy became the most important thing in Julie’s life and the house in San Francisco grew more real than the house in Barrow. She knew each flower on the hill where Amy’s house stood, each brick in the wall around the garden, and each tall blowing tree. She also knew the curls in the wrought-iron gate, and how many steps led up to the big front door; she could almost see the black-and-white tile on the floor of the foyer. If she closed her eyes she could imagine the arched doorway, the Persian rug on the living-room floor, the yellow chairs and the huge window that looked over the bay. Radios, lamps, coffee tables—all these she could see. And if she shut her eyes tight, she could feel Amy’s hand in her hand and hear Amy’s big feet tap the sidewalk. The second floor was always fun to dream about. At the top of the winding stairs four doors opened upon rooms lit with sunshine. And one was the pink room, the one that would be hers when she got to San Francisco.
To amuse herself she thought of the hill where the white house stood in San Francisco. When it seemed almost real enough to touch, and very beautiful, it vanished abruptly; for the tundra was even more beautiful—a glistening gold, and its shadows were purple and blue. Lemon-yellow clouds sailed a green sky and every wind-tossed sedge was a silver thread.