Julie of the Wolves
Julie of the Wolves is a young adult novel about a thirteen year old girl, Julie Edwards Miyax Kapugen. Her Eskimo name is Miyax Kapugen, but her English name is Julie Edwards. She is an Eskimo girl who grows up in a traditional Eskimo village until she is married off to her father’s friend’s son, who is also thirteen. After her husband attacks her, she runs away from her new home and attempts to make her way through the Alaskan wilderness to reach her pen pal in San Francisco. After getting lost and not having the North Star to guide her, Miyax founds a pack of wolves that she attempts to befriend in order to benefit from their hunting abilities. She names each of them based on their characteristics and closely observes their behaviors in order to mimic their signals for different emotions. Using this strategy, she becomes accepted by the wolves and throughout the novel, the pack and Miyax protect and encourage each other. When the Alaskan summer ends and Miyax finds her way to a nearby village, she struggles with whether she should go on and re-enter the world of humans or if she should remain an Eskimo, depending on the land for survival. When she hears word that her long lost father, who taught her almost everything that she used to survive, was in the village, she enters to find herself torn one more between the world of Julie Edwards and that of Miyax Kapugen. There is ample symbolism within this novel that would not be difficult for students to identify without being so obvious that the symbols lose their value and impact. The line between man and animal is shockingly blurred and the point could easily be made that, in many ways, the animals within this story are more humane and compassionate than many humans. There are so many themes and issues that need discussing out of this novel. The struggle of man vs. nature and the idea that there should not be a struggle at all is one that resonates very strongly in light of the current environmental crisis that our planet is facing. The ideas of richness, beauty, and friendships are all called into questions and these ideas and themes are redefined many times throughout this book. This is one of those books that needs to be discussed and the elements of human nature that are presented should be analyzed and evaluated. Some of the lessons that the book teaches are difficult lessons to learn and they would be hard for some students to handle, but they are worth exploring in any capacity that is appropriate for the individual classroom. If anyone has not read this book, it is a good one to be familiar with and it is one that definitely lingers after the reading is finished.