53 pages • 1 hour read
Jean Craighead GeorgeJulie Of The Wolves
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Food and Survival
Much of the plot centers on Miyax’s struggle to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. The novel defines this struggle immediately by describing her lost on the North Slope, desperately trying to find food. During the sections in which Miyax is in the wilderness, food symbolizes her struggle for survival. The novel’s descriptions of food encapsulate both the precariousness of Miyax’s situation and the surprising richness of the wilderness that she loves.
The urgency of Miyax’s need to find food is suggested when the narrator notes that a “dull pain seized her stomach” (14). Her search for food drives Part 1 of the novel, and she is overjoyed when she finally convinces the wolves to share some with her, exclaiming, “I’ll live! I’ll live!” (33). When the pack shares a caribou carcass with her, Miyax gleefully eats the organs raw, and before that she ate “the warm viscera” of an owlet, calling them “the nuts and candy of the Arctic” (46). Even after Miyax gains her footing in the wilderness, with the help of the wolf pack, the search for food is intimately connected to her survival. This is clearest in a climactic scene in which Jello raids her camp and steals food from the underground cellar she carefully built. At moments like those, Miyax confronts the fragility of life while celebrating survival.
Tools and Technology
Tools and technology symbolize the ingenuity and creativity of Miyax and her culture. However, the novel also includes signs that technology can represent danger and corruption. Out on the tundra, Miyax utilizes a variety of traditional tools and techniques to survive, such as freezing a skin underwater to make it take a bowl shape, forming ice poles for a tent by freezing reeds, and sewing caribou hides using a needle. As a strong, independent, 13-year-old girl, Miyax is particularly proud to use a “man’s knife” (59), proving she is intelligent and capable. Miyax expresses pride in traditional Inuit knowledge and techniques. Similarly, the importance of tools is demonstrated when Jello temporarily steals Miyax’s tools and she fears for her life; without the tools, she cannot fashion her basic needs or get food.
In contrast to the benefits of traditional tools and techniques, and the respect Miyax has for them, the novel characterizes modernized technology as dangerous and corrupted. This is most clearly shown when Miyax sees the airplane carrying the hunters that shoot and kill Amaroq and injure Kapu. Miyax does not see the airplane or the hunter’s guns as useful tools or technological marvels. Instead, they suggest hunting for sport, which is antithetical to Miyax’s worldview. Miyax views modernized technology like the airplane and guns as a sign of civilization’s corruption and evilness because they are connected to the death of her “adopted father” (122) Amaroq. Her rejection of these modernized elements corresponds to her desire to avoid civilization.
Language and Identity
Characters choose to utilize either English or an Inuit language, and those choices correspond to the cultures with which the characters identify. Miyax makes conscious choices to utilize either English or her native, Upick language. Though she attempts to learn English “rather happily” (84) when she enters school, she also prefers her native language. Choosing to use it implies her preference for Inuit culture. This preference is shown in her adamant decision to be called Miyax rather than Julie, for instance.
Her native language has an emotional significance for her as well. After the death of Amaroq, Miyax “spoke of her sadness in Eskimo, for she could not recall any English” (142). When she finds herself struggling to fit in when living in the city, she is relieved to find her friend Pearl, who is also Inuit. Like Miyax, Pearl has a traditional name (Pani), but unlike Miyax, Pearl prefers to go by her English name. Miyax is excited to find a friend she can connect to culturally and notes that she and Pearl only speak to each other in English because they can’t understand their respective Inuit languages (Upick and Iñupiat), and both find English to be a convenient common language. Later, when Miyax meets Inuit hunters on the tundra, she “smiles at [a hunter] as if she did not understand” (154) when he speaks English and instead implies they must speak in their native language. This choice obscures any trace that suggests she is a runaway but also symbolizes her choice of Inuit culture as the foundation of her identity.
To provide a level of authenticity, and to emphasize Miyax’s pride in her culture, George weaves various words from Miyax’s native language into the plot. Notable examples include “i’noGo tied,” which refers to spirit totems, “gussak,” which is the term for a non-Inuit woman, and “Amaroq,” which means wolf, and which is the name that Miyax gives to the head of the wolf pack.
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