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
Kahu returns to Whanghara a year later. All she wants to do is see Koro Apirana, whom Nanny Flowers calls a “paka” (bugger). Koro Apirana is returning from a meeting in the capital, and the family picks him up at the bus station. Kahu embraces him and calls him “paka.” (She never stops using this nickname.)
“Paka” is Kahu’s first word in Maori—and may even be her first word of all. But she uses it as a term of endearment when it’s really an insult. This scene’s humor depends on Koro Apirana’s impotence: the more he seeks to control everything in his family, the less he actually controls. Kahu defies his wishes and mirrors Nanny Flowers’s language instead of Koro Apirana’s, even though she is too young to understand her own words.
Themes
Koro Apirana is a well-known but widely feared activist. Rawiri and his friends call him “Super Maori” (after Superman). His meeting was about building preschools based on the model of his language school. Curiously, Kahu starts sneaking into his classes at this school (which Rawiri attends). One lesson is about whales: in Maori mythology, the gods wanted to put sharks and whales in lakes but agreed to let them live in the ocean instead. Out of gratitude, whales started helping humans who got lost at sea. One such whale brought a major Maori ancestor, Paikea, to Whangara. But over time, humans forgot how to talk to whales and even started killing them.
Rawiri deeply respects Koro Apirana because, despite his sexism and grumpiness, he has dedicated his life to rebuilding Maori society after a century of colonialism devastated it. Today, historians call this movement the Maori Renaissance and celebrate New Zealand’s Maori preschools as one of the most successful language revival policies ever. In his speech, Koro Apirana explains the special, ancestral connection between humans and whales, then uses the deterioration of this relationship as a metaphor to explain what has gone wrong in Maori culture. Namely, by accepting the Western view that humans are inherently superior to animals, plants, and the natural world, the Maori have cut off their connection to that world. According to this theory, Paikea’s journey on the whale would be impossible today because the Maori people have broken the age-old trust between themselves and whales. (In Chapter 5, the whales’ perspective confirmed this.) But this also means that, if someone can reestablish this long-lost connection, they would help restore the Maori to their lost glory.
Themes
That night after class, Nanny Flowers holds the crying Kahu. She asks Rawiri what happened and tells him to take care of Kahu for a few hours. He is supposed to go to the movies with some friends and a date, but his date cancels when he calls to explain that Kahu is with him. He brings Kahu to the theater anyway. The movie is about whale hunting. Kahu sleeps through most of it but wakes up at the end, as a whale is dying tragically onscreen. She cries uncontrollably. Rawiri, his friends, and Kahu go to the beach, then return home.
Kahu’s reactions show that she feels a special connection to whales. This fact has several important implications for the novel as a whole. It deepens the parallel between Kahu and Kahutia Te Rangi, for instance, and it may help readers predict how the whale herd will fit into the novel’s overall plot. But above all, it suggests that Kahu may have the power to repair the lost connection between humans and whales, which Koro Apirana was lamenting just a few pages before.
Themes
At home, Nanny Flowers dramatically announces that she is really divorcing Koro Apirana, who has to sleep in Rawiri’s room. When she learns that Rawiri took Kahu to the movies and the beach, she smacks him. That night, Rawiri tries to wake Koro Apirana because he suddenly remembers something that happened on the beach: when a pod of killer whales passed in the distance, Kahu made whale noises that sounded just like the movie. She seemed to be warning them, and they dived as though to avoid danger. “Hui e, haumi e, taiki e,” the chapter ends, “Let it be done.”
Even though sexism prevents her from exercising power in public life, Nanny Flowers continues to rule over her family—including her husband, the chief—in private. Kahu’s behavior on the beach again shows that she is not an ordinary child; when the whales dive in response to her call, this suggests that she isn’t just imitating them, but actually talking with them. Koro Apirana has just given a speech about humans tragically losing the ability to communicate with whales, so Kahu’s ability to talk with them indicates that she is not just a precocious child but a whole new kind of human—one capable of reversing the Maori people's cultural decline by restoring their connection to nature. Unfortunately, Koro Apirana is the only person who doesn’t seem to recognize this.
Themes
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