Northwind

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-10

Chapters 11-16

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “The Saga of the Sea Child”

Leif became an orphan after his mother died giving birth. His father, who died heroically in a whaling accident, was already in Valhalla. Leif was born with a blood clot in his hand, a sign foretelling danger. When he was a baby, he survived thanks to an old woman who nourished him with a milk-soaked rag. Called “wharf rat” (4) by the locals, Leif fed and clothed himself on scraps until taking up living and sailing on the ships. Leif paid his way by doing odd jobs on ships traveling north to hunt seals for their fur. Now age 12, Leif has lost count of how many ships he’s been on. One particularly abusive ship takes him far north, only to leave him and all the old men aboard behind in a remote fishing camp. A man called “Old Carl” (7) cares for Leif along with another orphan boy called “Little Carl” (8), teaching the children how to catch and smoke the salmon the camp sells to seal-hunting ships. When they realize their ship is not returning for them, the group attempts to build a canoe to escape the brutal weather, but tragedy strikes, and they never finish.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Men Who Have Lost Their Shadows”

A ghost-like ship drifts into the channel, bringing the smell of rot and death. The ship sits quietly for a time, a “silent horror” (15) to the inhabitants of the fish camp. Then four men emerge and approach. Filthy and skeletal, the men speak another language, and attempts to communicate with hand gestures fail. The gaunt men return to their ship, and the currents carry it away. Old Carl explains that the visitors are ghosts or spirits, “men who have lost their shadows” (18) because of some sin they committed, and now they roam the earth looking for shadows to steal. He labels their arrival a bad omen. Sure enough, eight days after the ship’s departure, people in the camp begin falling ill with a hemorrhagic fever. As people begin to die and Old Carl himself falls ill, he sends Leif and Little Carl away on a canoe, urging them to escape to the north.

Leif paddles, and with the help of the current, the boys move swiftly away from the camp. Seeing that Little Carl is frightened, Leif comforts him as best as he can. By the end of the first day, Little Carl is feverish. Leif anchors them to shore using an arrow, but they sleep in the canoe. The next day, Little Carl is much sicker, and Leif begins vomiting blood. Despite his rising fever, Leif paddles with all his might toward the north until he loses consciousness.

Chapter 3 Summary: “Mother Waters and Brother Whales”

Leif lies motionless in the canoe for several days as the currents carry it along. He thinks he is dead but does not fear the oblivion. When he regains consciousness, he sees that only Little Carl is dead. A pod of whales begins to play with the canoe as if it is a toy, and the mother whale nudges the canoe toward the shoreline. The illness leaves Leif too weak to stand, but he must climb out of the canoe, which is full of vomit and bile. Summoning enough energy to crawl, Leif gets into the water and washes himself. He tries to lift Little Carl out but is still too weak.

After drinking from a spring and eating some of the smoked fish, Leif regains enough strength to pull Little Carl from the filth. Leif washes the body and wraps it in a blanket as he considers his options. He can’t bring himself to burn the body as is the custom when sickness ravages a camp, but he can’t just leave the body for the animals to take. Leif remembers Old Carl’s description of a large island to the west, and he resolves to reach it, viewing the location as a good haven for his young ward’s spirit:

[It would be] a safe island for Little Carl’s spirit to rest peacefully while it left the body and made its way to Valhalla, where surely it would go as all warriors who fought and died went and he had fought the sickness as well and as bravely as any man (40).

Leif washes the inside of the canoe clean, places the wrapped body inside, and paddles away from the shore.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Island Currents”

Still recovering, Leif can’t paddle for long before he is exhausted. He lies back in the boat to rest, resolving to let the current carry him. Leif reflects on how all spirits are merging: “[…] the spirit of the boat, and the spirit of Little Carl and his spirit had become one” (43). This merger, he hopes, will ensure they reach the island safely: “And he thought, the boat has eyes, has our spirits mixed with its own, let it find the way” (44). While he rests, Leif refocuses his senses on the natural world and listens to the varying bird calls. The canoe lands on a small island, and Leif knows it is the perfect place to lay Little Carl to rest. After placing the body at the base of a tree, Leif builds a tomb of stones to protect the body and names it “The Cairn of Little Carl” (48).

Leif inventories his supplies and finds an ax, a knife that was a gift from Old Carl, a copper pot, fishhooks and line, a spear, wool blankets, a pouch containing flint for fire starting, and a wool overshirt. Leif knows he must shift his focus from grieving to ensuring his survival, which will entail finding warmer clothing for winter. However, feeling the ceremony is complete, Leif resolves to build a fire and sing a song over Little Carl’s body. Remembering the way Little Carl tottered around, fell over, and repeatedly got back up, Leif composes a song that extols the small boy’s fighting spirit. However, Leif is so overcome with grief and memories of the camp before the sickness that he can’t sing. He briefly contemplates returning to the camp but remembers Old Carl’s warning to never return. Leif falls asleep against the cairn knowing he must continue northward.

Chapters 1-4 Analysis

In the opening chapter, the author uses a saga to tell the protagonist’s backstory and establish the setting of the novel. Sagas, from the Old Norse or Icelandic traditions, use prose narratives to tell the story of heroes, deities, and historical events. By drawing on this tradition, Gary Paulsen also establishes the importance of story at the outset. Without a written language, ancient cultures relied on oral tradition and drawings to transmit culture. With no family to provide him with his origin story, Leif must generate and store his story within himself; in other words, Leif is his own mechanism of transmission.

Paulsen also uses the saga narrative to establish the main conflict of the novel, which is Leif’s struggle to survive. The period is unclear, but the novel is geographically set in Norway, a place characterized by its stunning natural beauty but harsh, cold climate. From being orphaned at birth to being enslaved on hunting ships and having no one to care for him, Leif at first depends on others for survival. However, brutal as it is, his time on the ships teaches Leif that he must rely on his strength to persevere. A hallmark of Paulsen’s novels is the use of the man versus nature conflict; Leif’s early life, though, is characterized by man versus man conflict as the boy ekes out a wretched existence as an indentured servant. The ship’s abandonment of the men at the fish camp could represent a calamity, but for Leif, it is a turning point in his childhood and establishes the theme of Self-Discovery Through Coming of Age. Released from the enslavement of the ships, Leif finds a home for the first time in the fish camp and, in Old Carl, the first semblance of family the young boy has ever known. Life in the camp isn’t easy, but compared to the misery of the ships, Leif is freer than he’s ever been. Though Old Carl was with him on the ship, the freedom of living on land allows the old man to impart to Leif his wilderness survival wisdom; in this more stable environment, the transmission of skills from one generation to the next is possible. Leif thereby learns the process of smoking fish, which is not only lucrative for the camp but also vital for Leif’s sustenance later in the novel.

Though Old Carl sees the arrival of the spectral ship as a visit from the spirit world, the ship’s presence is another example of the unpredictability and harshness of nature. Infected with cholera, a deadly bacterial infection that spreads rapidly in crowded spaces like a ship full of unwashed men, the ship represents another force in Leif’s life over which he has no control. However, though ships become a symbol of suffering and adversity for Leif, when Old Carl sends him away in a canoe, the small vessel becomes not only an essential survival tool but also an emblem of Leif’s resilience and independence. Much as Leif’s lack of connection with nature on ships led to suffering, the connection to nature he develops on the canoe leads to self-discovery and, in many senses, survival—a relationship that reflects early on the theme of Surviving Through Connection with Nature.

Having little sense of his identity before, Leif makes paddling north and caring for Little Carl his entire persona. Only after Little Carl’s death does Leif start to understand the importance of story, which is key to recognizing desires and honoring memories. Though his grief prevents him from singing, Leif’s writing of the song and building of the cairn are his first acts of storytelling. Through these efforts, he marks the tiny boy’s existence and humanity. Having no memory of his mother, Leif uses Little Carl’s death as the catalyst to begin chronicling his own story; this impulse emphasizes the theme of The Power of Story to Preserve Memory and Heal. By speaking Little Carl’s story into song, Leif holds space in his memories for the influence the boy had on him and gives himself closure in the loss, allowing himself to move forward and continue north.