Previous
Autumn: Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Whale Rider, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humans and Nature
Maori Identity
Gender and Power
Familial Love
Summary
Analysis
Two weeks later, Koro Apirana takes his young potential chiefs to sea, tosses a rock in the water, and dares them to retrieve it—but they fail. Back at home, he locks himself in his room and cries. Kahu worries about him, and the next morning, she and Nanny Flowers accompany Rawiri out to sea on his dinghy. Rawiri shows them where Koro Apirana threw the rock, and Kahu suddenly dives overboard to look for it.
The young boys fail at Koro Apirana’s challenges, which suggests that they aren’t capable of serving as chief or leading the community. If Kahu can succeed where they failed, this strongly suggests that she is destined to be chief in the future instead. It’s noteworthy that she tries to get the rock more out of concern for Koro Apirana than out of a desire to prove herself.
Themes
Concerned, Nanny Flowers sends Rawiri after Kahu. He struggles in the waves but notices Kahu swimming calmly at the ocean floor. Nanny Flowers jumps in, too, terrified that she will lose Kahu. A pod of dolphins approaches Kahu and she mounts one, which takes her to another part of the reef. She picks up the rock off the ocean floor, swims to the surface, and gives it to Nanny Flowers, who insists that they must not tell Koro Apirana what Kahu did because “he’s not ready yet.” The chapter ends with: “Hui e, haumi e, taiki e. / Let it be done.”
Kahu is clearly comfortable at sea: she’s a natural swimmer and has some kind of special rapport with the dolphins. Indeed, she rides them just like Kahutia Te Rangi rode the whale. (This foreshadows the novel’s conclusion, when she will ride a whale, too.) Yet her swimming is jarring to Rawiri, who considers himself her protector but finds himself unable to actually protect her. Nanny Flowers’s comment about Koro Apirana not being ready to see Kahu’s powers shows that she also sees Kahu as destined to be the chief.
Themes
