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
Back in Whangara, a young jogger sees a large herd of whales approaching the beach. Word spreads fast, and news crews descend on the town. Footage shot from a helicopter shows about 200 whales dying on the beach—and a group of men cutting one of them apart with a chainsaw. This infuriates the local Maori.
While the novel never explicitly states that these whales come from the ancient whale’s herd, this is overwhelmingly likely, since the herd specifically headed for Whangara at the end of the last chapter. Accordingly, the other whales were right to worry that the ancient whale was leading them into further danger. The men with the chainsaw demonstrate how humans have started treating animals like whales as a resource to exploit for profit. After Koro Apirana’s speech tying the loss of Maori tradition to the evils of whaling, his community’s response to the beached whales will clearly serve as a test of their commitment to their culture and the natural world that sustains them.
Themes
Rawiri calls Koro Apirana and Porourangi, who are traveling on the South Island and report that they are trying to return to Whangara as soon as they can. Rawiri tells Nanny Flowers not to let Kahu see the news, and he picks up Koro Apirana’s boys and takes them to the beach, which is full of people. A white woman sits on a dead whale to prevent a group of men from cutting it up, and a local woman sends Rawiri and the boys down the beach to stop a different group from doing the same. One of the boys, Billy, cuts the tires off the men’s truck with his chainsaw.
With Koro Apirana and Porourangi absent, Rawiri takes charge of important village affairs for the first time. He worries that Kahu will suffer if she hears about the whales because he knows how connected she feels to them. Yet by keeping Kahu away, Rawiri also loses access to her special powers and puts the whales in further danger. Finally, stopping the people who have come to mutilate the whales is an important first step, not only because it will keep more whales alive, but also because it will mean asserting the traditional Maori view of animals as peers and equals over the exploitative Western view of them as inferior and expendable.
Themes
The police start harassing Rawiri and the boys but soon realize that they’re all on the same side and send them to patrol the beach on their motorbikes instead. In groups of eight, the townspeople pour water on the crying, bleeding whales to try and keep them alive. They even start talking to the whales.
The police routinely profile and harass Maori people, who are stereotyped as criminals in New Zealand, like other indigenous and minority groups across the world. So it surprises Rawiri that, for once, the police and the Maori are uniting to try and protect their country’s wildlife.
Themes
As the tide rises, the navy starts towing the whales back to sea—and saves 140 of them, until the tide falls and the whales beach themselves again because they want to stay close to the herd. Children come after school to help, too, but the whales start dying one by one. Again, rescuers return some of the whales to sea, only for them to come back to the beach. By evening, all 200 whales are dead. Back at home, Nanny Flowers reveals that Kahu knows what happened. Rawiri finds Kahu sitting atop a bluff, making cooing noises at the sea and waiting in vain for a response. Rawiri hugs her and realizes that “our final challenge [is] almost upon us.”
The tragic, even apocalyptic image of the beached whales dying one by one alarms Rawiri because nature appears to be self-destructing. In the context of Maori history and religion, this suggests that humans have failed to protect nature and use its resources sustainably. The whales’ mass death may even seem like a protest against humans forgetting their ancestral interspecies bond and failing to care for them.
Themes
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