Man vs. Nature Theme Analysis

In an attempt to escape going to jail for assaulting a classmate named Peter, 15-year-old offender Cole Matthews agrees to undergo a yearlong banishment on a remote Alaskan island through the program Circle Justice. Cole undergoes two stints on the island. The first is a disaster: he angrily burns his provided shelter and tries to swim away, and a white American black bear known as a Spirit Bear mauls him when he attempts to kill it. Cole’s actions put him in the hospital for months. When he returns to the island six months later to try again, he’s a changed person. Rather than seeing the natural world either as something he can dominate or something that will dominate him, Cole begins to see the world around him as a teacher that he can learn from. Through Cole’s changing relationship to nature, the novel suggests that the natural world can be humanity’s greatest teacher, if only a person learns to approach it with respect and curiosity.

When Cole first arrives on the remote Alaskan island, he makes his worldview plain. To him, the natural world is little different from the city he left behind: it’s something to dominate. For instance, as he and Edwin discuss that Cole’s crude cabin is so far away from his water source because he shares the stream with an assortment of wildlife (including bears), Cole says plainly that he’d kill a bear if he saw one. Cole’s early actions on the island reflect this worldview. He burns the cabin and all his supplies, as he doesn’t plan to be on the island long and doesn’t think that the weather (which, at this point, is beautiful) is going to pose a problem for him. Then, he attempts to swim away from his island with the eventual plan of hitching a ride on a fishing boat and disappearing. When this fails, and the Spirit Bear appears and seems unafraid of him, Cole feels as though this is his last chance to prove his dominance over the natural world by trying to kill the Spirit Bear. It’s telling that all three of these attempts fail spectacularly; a cold, injured, and starving Cole is finally rescued days after the bear mauls him. Cole’s choice to disrespect nature puts him in a situation where he’s unable to learn anything from the natural world—except that it’s more powerful than he is.

However, during the two days that Cole spends on the island waiting for help after the mauling, he begins to notice the rhythms and cycles of plants and animals around him—and through this, he begins to experience new emotions and a sense of humbleness. As he takes note of a bird’s nest one day and then watches a lightning storm take down the tree, killing all the baby birds, Cole discovers that he feels compassion for those baby birds. This is a new emotion for Cole, who seldom thinks of anyone but himself. Cole realizes that while the natural world has the power to take lives without a care, it also has the ability to provide him with tools for survival, like food. He turns to grass, easily accessible worms, and even a live mouse that crawls over his hand to keep himself from starving. Even though Cole has no choice but to acknowledge the destructive power of the natural world, his own powerlessness and his dire need for help also force him to look for the ways that nature, the only thing he has, can help him.

Upon his return to the island, Cole continues this process. Especially as he engages in Edwin’s rituals that get him out in nature every morning, Cole finds that animals, including the Spirit Bear, begin to show themselves—and if Cole pays attention, they all have something to teach him. Through his almost nightly dances around the fire wherein he acts like an animal he saw that day, Cole has an opportunity to practice a lesson he learned from an animal. By embodying whales, he learns that it takes a group to get through hard times; by embodying other animals, he learns about tenacity, caution, and power. Cole’s time on the island ultimately teaches him exactly what it was supposed to do: that every being, no matter how big or small, is worthy of consideration—and every animal has something to share. One can only learn these lessons, however, if they humble themselves before nature and approach the natural world and the animals that inhabit it with respect and curiosity.