The Raft

“My heart pounded a little as I crossed the avenue. I’d never realized that I did everything in Honolulu with someone, either AJ or my parents. Come to think of it, everything I did, I did with someone. Even on Midway, when I was alone, people were never very far away.” 

Robie is adventurous but she is not fearless. She notices her isolation and she feels her vulnerability. This quote and these traits typify the liminal age is she at, one on the border between child and adult. 

“I felt an overwhelming need for reassurance, for someone to tell me everything would be okay. That I would be okay. But no one did.”

As the plane crashes, Robie realizes that she has no one to reassure her, andthat things might not end well for her. Here, she reverts to a younger, less mature mindset, again showing her as on the cusp of adult and child, and able to lean away from responsible action in moments of true fear and calamity. 

“The flotation device was still in my lap, but I didn’t even try to put it on. I couldn’t make myself look at it. None of this was real, none of it. Everything was fuzzy. Dull. None of it could possibly be real.” 

Robie finds herself dissociating from the reality of the crash. She is entirely unprepared for this kind of situation. This disassociating is a common response to traumatic events.

“The falling lasted forever, my arms windmilling in the void. I wanted to stop moving. Stop the noise. Stop the wet. Stop the cold. Stop the blowing. Stop everything.” 

Robie experiences pure helplessness as she falls from the plane. Further, this passage shows Bodeen leading a series of sentences with the same word, a craft device she repeats through the novel. 

“It was over. I was over. Dying was so much easier than I thought.”

When Robie first hits the water after the crash, she is ready to give up, and accepts the inevitability of her death. 

“Something in me wouldn’t accept the easy way out.” 

Robie finds her survival instinct, rejects her initial acceptance of death, and fights her way to the surface of the water. This quote, paired with the one prior, further illustrate Robie’s coming-of-age.

“I had to cover my ears so I wouldn’t scream myself. I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands tighter over my ears and was alone with the pounding of my heart. Alone with the stinging of my scalp. Alone with the pain in my chest. Alone with the rain on my face. Alone with my freezing wet clothes, clammy dead weight against my skin. My breathing slowed. Alone with the truth. I had almost died.” 

On the raft, as the plane sinks, Robie shakes off the last vestiges of her denial, and finally faces up to the facts of what has happened.

“Max’s head lolled on the side of the raft and, with knees curled and arms crossed, he seemed to be sleeping. In that position he looked like a little boy.” 

After much heroic behavior from Max, he is portrayed in a vulnerable position. Soon after, we see Robie begin to figuratively absorb Max’s maturity and fend for herself.

“Me. It was all on me. Everything was all on me. As much as I hoped for it, my mom was not coming to get me. I was the only help I was getting.” 

Robie finally accepts the full weight of her responsibility for her own survival.

"You have only yourself to rely on. But you know a lot...You, on your own, are strong enough to survive." 

Robie gives herself a pep-talk to convince herself to keep fighting. Here, we see the two sides of herself—the child and the adult—in something very close to direct conversation.

"It seemed like weeks had passed since that day I'd gotten my nose pierced...I had been a different person just thinking about stupid stuff like diamonds in my nose." 

Robie reflects on how the raft has changed her perspectiveand changed her outlook on what concerns are a priority for her. Bodeen also rolls in a critique of commodity fetishism.

"Numb. Blurred. Fuzzy. Dulled. Like none of it was real. Except for the hunger pangs in my stomach."

Robie’s mood and sense of reality oscillates again towards shock and dissociation and the reality of her situation fully sets in. 

"The rain didn't stop, and soon I was not only drenched but shivering, regretting my prayer for the rain not to stop. How quickly things went from one extreme to the other. I just wanted a happy medium but wasn't even sure what that would be." 

Without the comforts of human society, Robie is entirely at the mercy of theelements. Further, Robie realizes she can’t have things both ways, something children often deem possible. 

"I wasn't feeling the fear I'd felt the first day or two. Anxiety had transitioned to boredom. Just sitting there, watching the same sky, the same water, same colors. I longed for something to break the monotony." 

Robie admits that her adrenaline has subsided, leaving mere boredom  despite the life-or-death circumstances.

"I'd grown used to the motion. And the quiet. At first the quiet was so loud. There was so much nothing that I couldn't block out. But I was getting used to that too, the quiet." 

Robie acclimates to her new environment on the raftand learns to masterher initial fear. Shortly after, a plane flies by overhead, breaking the quiet; Robie learns that the only constant is change. 

"Although hungry and thirsty, I needed to prioritize. In case a plane flew over or a ship went by, I needed to be able to signal them." 

Robie exhibits a new determination and long-term plan once she gets to Lisianski and has more time to be safer than she was on the raft. 

"Her eyes were still open. Still full of tears. Still so sad. Still so...human. With gentle hands, I closed them for her."

Robie grieves for the maimed seal that she killed, closing her eyes like a human’s. Here, we see Robie’s humanity continue to function, despite being in a world she necessarily needs her animal survival instincts to persist. 

"The real Max hadn't said a word since the first night. Since he saved my life, twice, and I was ungrateful and yelled at him […] The rest was all my imagination […] It was all me trying to stay sane […] First I shoved his body overboard to save my own life. Then I used him, the memory of him, what little I knew of him, to stay alive. And when I couldn't do it anymore, when I needed something from him, when I needed him to talk to me, I read his journal." 

Robie faces the facts: she pushed Max’s body overboard to keep herself and the raft afloat. She has only been talking with an imaginary recreation of Max. She has effectively augmented this uncomfortable truth. 

"There was no one to make me go in that water except myself. And I was too much of a coward. Not brave enough to save myself. Not brave enough. Or was I?"

Robie, after doubting herself, finds the courage to go after the survival suit that floats close to her spot on the beach, knowing full well that there are almost certainly sharks very nearby.

"The suit could mean rescue. Salvation."

Robie has become resourceful through her experience on the raft, and also determined: though she is intimidated by the floating corpse in the survival suit, she focuses on how it can help her survive.

"I thought of all the food I'd eaten in my life. All the food I'd wasted in my life. The Happy Meal in Honolulu that ended up on the ground. I didn't even care then, not really. There was always more food. Always. Not anymore." 

Robie reflects on how the meaning of abundance is contextually dependent.

"Do you wait for your parents to show up one last time with food? And if you do wait, how long? Hunger is a powerful feeling that has been sending albatross chicks on their first journey since forever. But wait one day too many and you'll be too weak to fly." 

Through the symbol of the albatross, Robie considers the uncertain nature of being a young creature or human setting out on your own. It’s difficult to optimize the balance between taking advantage of support, and not overly relying on it. 

“Suddenly my unthinkable idea didn’t seem so unthinkable. If I was going to save myself, I had to think selfishly.” 

Robie states that the survival principle that has been guiding her for some time. While the human part of her, the part connected to the fabric of society, views eating the baby seal, Starbuck, as selfish, it’s also mandatory, should Robie want to find a way to return to said society.