The Explorer's Daughter by Kari Herbert: Analysis (Updated)

The Explorer's Daughter by Kari Herbert: Analysis

About the author: Kari Herbert (born 17th September 1970) is a British travel writer, polar explorer, photographer, and television presenter. As the eldest daughter of the polar explorer Sir Wally Herbert, Kari Herbert lived on a remote island in the Arctic with the Polar Inuit of Northwest Greenland for the first few years of her life. This no doubt has influenced her writing and how she identifies herself; the very title of this piece is a clear homage to her father and his influence. 

Purpose: The purpose of this piece is to describe and discuss the ideas and rationale behind whale hunting, as well as conveying the author’s own opinion. Herbert often switches between descriptive and informative language and the piece shows her conflicting feelings between her love of the whales and the need for survival of the hunters.

Analysis

First paragraph:

Here the writer is very descriptive and writes in the past tense. Notice how she focuses on the detail of the narwhal - how they move, what they look like and how she reacts to it - she is clearly in awe of them. With this very vivid and emotive language used in the first paragraph, the writer establishes the first side of the conflict, in establishing the whales firstly as beautiful and majestic creatures to engage the reader and allows the reader to empathise with them.

The writer uses a lot of references to light and colour to emphasise the beauty and joy of the whales. For example, Herbert describes the water spray of the whales as "catching the light in spectral play of colour."  The use of the words 'catching' and 'play' establishes this idea of the playful and active nature of the whales, emphasising that the whales are live animals, simply living and enjoying their lives. Additionally, the evening light is described as "butter gold" and "glinting." This rich imagery creates a sense of warmth and softness - which is interesting as this is clearly a very cold climate! I feel like this highlights a great sense of life and the raw beauty of nature. She also describes the scene of the whales as a 'glittering kingdom,' which once again uses the imagery of light and shows how majestic the environment of the whales is, perhaps suggesting it is superior to any other. Also adding to the soft and warm mood, Herbert uses alliteration of the 's' sounds in her descriptions, such as "soft billows of smoke," and the use of 'billows’ highlights the gentle movement of the smoke. 

Herbert describes the movement of the whales, "looking as if they were going to merge, but always slowly, methodically passing each other by." The use of the words 'merge ',' 'slowly' and methodically' give the sense of large slow and majestic movements, but also the long structure of this sentence and the use of longer words, broken up with commas also reflect this movements of the whales. In stark contrast, Herbert’s descriptions of humans and their movements are fast, erratic and irregular. Herbert describes herself as 'scrambling’ as if her movements are clumsy and anxious - in this way the whales are comparatively much calmer and superior. She takes a 'sharp' breath, perhaps setting up the association between humans and weapon imagery (spears/ knives?). Furthermore, the hunters are described as being 'dotted,' which has a staccato and anxious feel to it, in juxtaposition to the longer and rounder sounds of the words describing the whales.

In the last sentence Herbert refers to light again, describing the whales as "mischievous tricks of the shifting light." The use of the words "tricks" and "shifting" emphasise that the narwhals are magical and surreal creatures, almost too good to be true - the writer is completely in awe of these creatures.

Second Paragraph & Third Paragraph: 

These next two paragraphs set up the other side of the matter and the perspective of the hunters.From the very beginning of the second paragraph there is a highly noticeable and sudden change of tone in the writing. Herbert shifts from her previous use of descriptive and emotive language to a more informative and factual approach - notice how she refers to place names such as ‘Thule’ and ‘Inglefield Fjord’. She is now writing about the factual aspects of the whales and the environment which licenses a more serious and stripped back tone. It is as if she has snapped out of a dream and takes the reader with her back to reality. Moreover, the use of the words "escaping" and "dead of winter" now introduce a more dangerous atmosphere which contrasts with the previously joyful and beautiful description of the paragraph before.

The third paragraph continues with this unadorned and objective writing style, "The narwhal is an essential contributor to the survival of the hunters..."  I think this lack of emotion in her writing implores the reader to focus on the content and approach the information with a more objective, matter of fact perspective. The way the whales are referred to as a "contributor" is rather unsentimental, pragmatic, perhaps insensitive and diverges heavily from the descriptions of the whales in paragraph one. This also dehumanises (I realise they are not humans, but all sense of personality that was previously given to them has been removed) the whales, and emphasises the hunters’ view of them as a mere resource. 

Fourth Paragraph:

Here again there is a shift in tone, back to the past tense and more emotive, descriptive language as in the beginning of the passage. This paragraph focuses on the perspective of the wives of the hunters and how their emotions play an important role. 

There is a definite sense of tension and agitation/uneasiness present here. The words and phrases ‘clustered,’ ‘spinning,’ ‘gasp,’ ‘jump’ and ‘binoculars pointing in every direction’ create a lexical field that has the purpose of evoking a frantic and unsettled atmosphere. In this way, Herbert cleverly guides the reader to empathise with the wives - we gain the sense that the whale hunting is really important to them and would be devastating should it go wrong.

Another trope that emerges here is that of the primitive nature of the situation. The women ‘instinctively’ know which hunter is their husband; it is ‘crucial’ that he catches a whale; the meat is part of their ‘staple’ diet.’ Furthermore, Herbert compares the hunt to a ‘vast, waterborne game,’ This lexical field hints towards a kind of dog eats dog motif - fundamentally it is man vs whale; hunter vs hunted and. Additionally the words ‘intently’ and ‘crucial’ emphasise the desperation of the women.

... more analysis of last paragraphs to be updated soon.