64 pages • 2 hours read
Cherie DimalineHunting by Stars
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Hope in Bleak Times
The dystopian world of Hunting by Stars is riddled with violence, with the rights of Indigenous peoples taken away and their bodies treated as commodities. Throughout the novel, Dimaline uses recurring images of confinement, torture, and graphic violence to underscore the darkness of the world that surrounds her characters. At the same time, a powerful current of hope runs through the plot, with love and solidarity driving the characters to move forward despite their hardships rather than submitting to their circumstances. The tension between the bleak reality of their world and the hope that propels them forward breathes life into the narrative and emerges as its central theme. Dimaline illustrates this tension through the literary devices of contrast and juxtaposition, for images of hope and resilience are often contextualized with unspeakable circumstances, such as when Wab must give birth to Ishkode while chained in a modified dog crate. Wab is forced to labor in painful conditions, with no access to comfort and medical care. At the same time, her entire family supports her during the birth, breathing with her as one body. When Ishkode is born, French notes, “Even now, our family was growing” (347). The fact that he refers to Ishkode as “our family” is itself indicative of the hope that such a tight-knit community offers to these beleaguered characters.
In this context, love itself constitutes an act of resistance against a system that works to dehumanize the characters. The love that binds the family together makes its members specific and real to each other, as is seen when an imprisoned French dreams of Rose and the others. Not only does he remember how each member looks, but he also remembers their words and gestures, recalling that Miigwans was “elegant even in mourning, even in dirty pants, even without adornment” (21). This loving description stands in stark contrast to the dehumanizing terms used by government workers and the MOMS, for they refer to Indigenous peoples as “cargo,” or even “a ziplock for what we need” (89). Love and family are also shown to be important guiding lights for the primary characters, emboldening them to make hard decisions despite the consequences. For example, Rose leaves the family to look for French and ends up rescuing Nam from a horrifying situation. When Derrick asks Rose to stay with him, believing French to have converted for real, it is Rose’s intuition, strengthened by love, which tells her that French cannot have turned against his people.
Another vital source of hope in the novel is the link between language, memory, and stories. This dynamic is best illustrated when French discovers a missive from Marguerite Eliot containing the Anishinaabe greeting for “[s]ee you soon.” French is moved to realize that “someone else was putting down words that held us together” (201). The words are not just words, for they represent an ontology or a knowledge system: an entirely unique way of understanding the world. By preserving and recording these words, their writer is saving a unique aspect of the world itself for future generations. The act of resistance fills French with hope and keeps him going despite the brutality of his predicament in the school system. Similarly, Miig stresses the importance of sharing stories in French’s dream sequence. Storytime is known as “Story” (21), as if it were a physical space. Miig calls Story a home, one in which new and evolving tales must be preserved at all costs. Transmitting stories links the family with past and future generations, expanding their home for even the unborn. Stories therefore mark a continuum with the past and give characters hope for the future, keeping unique cultural identities and pride alive. The oppressive forces of the novel attempt to erase the culture and presence of the Indigenous characters, and place them all in one category; however, the truth is that the Indigenous peoples represent many different nations and tribes. The multitude of stories therefore reminds the characters that they have different languages and traditions, and each one is uniquely precious.
The Ethical Dilemmas of Survival Situations
The novel presents many challenging situations in which there is no clear ethical choice, and French in particular is subjected to impossible situations that require him to make difficult decisions in the space of an instant. Sometimes the ethical choice may not be the wise one, and sometimes a choice can benefit a group of people, but only at the expense of others. In such situations, right and wrong become ambiguous categories. For example, French’s decision to pretend to join the government is the choice of a survivalist, but this path escalates quickly into extremely murky territory when he must stand by and witness systematic genocide, and he also finds himself turning in a Indigenous to improve his standing in this system. However, his most egregious ethical lapse occurs when he captures an innocent woman and child in the course of maintaining his cover; at this moment, his pretense of complicity becomes very real, and he knows that he will always be haunted by his actions, even though they were his only path to survival. French’s choice essentially boils down to life or death, and he chooses life. Only if French is alive will he be able to further the cause of his people.
Within this context, the novel presents Mitch as a foil for French to showcase the full import of confronting ethical dilemmas. When Mitch is captured by the Recruiters, he is a mere child fighting to live. Like French, Mitch is tough, which is why he takes the opportunity that the Recruiters offer him and converts to what he eventually comes to see as a “higher calling” (79): betraying his own people to the government. Being part of the system keeps Mitch alive and gives him hope that there is a purpose to all the suffering around him. Because Mitch genuinely believes that Indigenous people are divinely ordained to serve their fellow humans via their marrow, he assists in their capture. While his unethical decision places him squarely against his people, Mitch adopts this stance as a survival mechanism. Perhaps the greatest differentiator between Mitch and French is that French feels conflicted about his choices, while Mitch never experiences self-doubt. After French helps to capture Therese and Sunny, he decides never to cross that line again. As he states: “There was no point in surviving if I had to hunt again. There would be nothing of me left to save” (238). French understands that certain acts can change someone so irrevocably that no redemption is possible. In his mind, the cons of ethical ambiguity overcome the pros of surviving.
Because the characters inhabit a ravaged world where resources are few and survival tentative, sometimes the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. For example, when Miig learns that Wab’s baby is being targeted by Recruiters, he has no choice but to move the family and leave Rose behind. Similarly, when French is first captured, Miig does not rush out to save him without first gaining better information, because he cannot jeopardize the entire family. As the father figure of his group, Miig’s decisions must ensure the survival of the family. Similarly, other characters make choices that prioritize the continuity of hope above individual survival. As the novel ends, Tree, Zheegwon, and Rania give up their lives to help create a better future for Ishkode. Though the family is devastated by their deaths, the narrative hints that the fallen family members survive in the memories of their loved ones, held in place by the continuum that exists between the past and the future.
The Impact of Greed on Indigenous People and the Environment
The novel’s many references to non-Indigenous people cannibalizing Indigenous people can be interpreted as a metaphor for colonial greed. At the beginning of the novel, French’s mother tells him in a vision that there was once a time when dreams lived “everywhere—muscles, skin, voice—and then we learned how to hide them better” (66). This statement suggests that Indigenous people sensed the greed of others and were forced to hide their gifts and abilities. However, faced with a greed that is relentless and exploitative, their dreams have now reached the marrow and are hidden deep in the bones. The insatiable greed of the novel’s antagonists leads them to commit multiple atrocities. For example, Tree and Zheegwon’s coming-to story contains the description of people carving off pieces of their flesh and fingers to consume each day, and, in the novel’s climax, the MOMS take Miig, cut him open, and remove a section of his rib to consume. In other instances, government officials refer to Indigenous people as “bags of marrow,” “containers,” and “cargo.” These dehumanizing practices indicate that such perpetrators view Indigenous people are mere resources, much like the earth and the environment. This metaphorical link between greed, Indigenous populations, and the land has a historical basis. Historically, the coming of European settlers led to encroachment onto Indigenous lands and the devastating loss of Indigenous populations. Land and people were thus systematically eaten away, and the recurring imagery of cannibalism in the novel is designed to acknowledge this real-world historical trend.
Emphasizing the dual impact of colonial greed, images of traumatized Indigenous bodies are juxtaposed with images of the ravaged earth. French describes a world in which lakes are poisoned and shrunk and “trash in the oceans was beached in small waves” (4). During Story, Miig astutely blames the destruction of the environment on human greed, saying, “We as humans forgot our specific place and spread into every place instead. As if we were removed from consequence” (177). This statement is designed to imply that modern-day mainstream capitalistic thinking simply wants to acquire, without considering the ripple effects of acquisition. In the novel’s universe, the earth finally retaliates by starving people of its resources. Indigenous people endure because they are immune to the plague and retain the ability to dream and to procreate. The fact that most Indigenous people can still dream indicates that the traditional way of living is more geared toward environmental conservation. This observation has real-world proof, as studies show that forests are more effectively conserved in territories maintained by Indigenous populations around the world.
In the novel, Indigenous people emerge as the last bastion of hope and resistance against capitalistic greed. Their traditional ways never lose sight of the limits of human place, and their culture links them in a continuum with nature, the past, and their loved ones. On the other hand, Indigenous people who forget these traditions suffer the same fate as the settlers, as the spiritual decay of the Chief demonstrates. Unable to dream, the Chief plagiarizes the visions of others, and Nam links the man’s inability to dream with his greed, stating, “Before he was the Chief, he was just plain old corrupt Chief Henry Williams […]. He had the biggest house in the rez and two brand-new boats” (184). The Chief’s greed is so great that he does not even respect the bodily autonomy of his sister’s child and sexually exploits Nam. Thus, the novel uses many different avenues to show how unchecked greed leads to crimes against the environment and historically marginalized communities.
Related Titles
By Cherie Dimaline
