43 pages • 1-hour read
Kensuke's Kingdom
A 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 Essential Need for Friendship and Companionship
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental health concerns, suicidal ideation, animal cruelty and death, illness, and death.
Michael’s life-changing friendship with Kensuke illustrates humans’ essential need for companionship. Their relationship takes time to form, evolving across the novel and advancing both characters’ personal growth. The 12-year-old Michael and 75-year-old Kensuke come from highly different cultures and generations, and the language barrier impedes their ability to communicate with each other. For example, Michael initially views Kensuke as his “captor, [his] persecutor” because he doesn’t understand why the man forbids him to light fires (55). An even greater obstacle to their friendship is Kensuke’s strong desire for solitude, which stems from the ways the trauma of World War II destroyed his faith in humanity. As Kensuke tells Michael: “I think, all people killer people. I hate all people, I think. I not want see people again” (73). Since Michael is the first human Kensuke has interacted with in the 40 years since World War II ended, their initial tension emphasizes his decades of isolation. Kensuke’s nurturing care for living creatures in need drives him to intervene when Michael is in danger, transforming Michael’s view of him: “My erstwhile enemy, my captor, had become my savior” (59). Morpurgo reinforces the essential need for companionship by positioning it as stronger than the factors that initially divide Michael and Kensuke.
The two characters’ transformative impact on each other’s lives further emphasizes the value of companionship. Kensuke saves the boy from drowning multiple times and sustains him by bringing him food and water each night even when he must brave a typhoon to do so. Michael’s gifts to Kensuke are less tangible but no less vital. Kensuke believes that his child perished in the bombing of Nagasaki. Caring for Michael and teaching him skills allows him to reconnect to a part of himself he thought had died. As Kensuke notes: “I hate you when you first come. But after little while you are like son to me” (79). Michael also offers Kensuke a sense of hope and peace by revealing to Kensuke that Japan rebuilt and thrived after the war. When the characters say their final goodbyes in Chapter 10, Kensuke says that knowing Michael is the “great honor of [his] life,” underlining how deeply he has been impacted by this one year of human company among decades of solitude (94). Kensuke and Michael’s friendship speaks to the profound solace and healing people can achieve through companionship and trust.
Survival and Resilience
Survival and resilience, prevalent themes in adventure fiction, help define the novel’s genre and heighten the stakes of the narrative. The characters of this maritime adventure demonstrate adaptability as they sail around the world and survive on an isolated island. At the start of the novel, Michael and his parents show resilience by turning challenges into opportunities. After both parents lose their jobs, their relationship becomes strained. As Michael reflects: “Sometimes I’d come home and they just wouldn’t be speaking. They’d argue a lot” (7). However, rather than giving up on themselves or their marriage, Michael’s parents find the courage to boldly pursue a new adventure. Adapting to their new lives at sea requires the characters to acquire many new skills and greater independence because they have only themselves to depend on in an emergency. For example, Michael describes his family’s need to draw upon reservoirs of resilience within themselves to face dangers like sea storms: “We went down in troughs so deep, we never thought we could possibly climb out again. But we did, and the more we rode our terror, rode the waves, the more we felt sure of ourselves and of the boat around us” (12). By overcoming threats to their physical survival as well as their stability as a family, Michael and his parents grow in resilience.
Morpurgo positions Michael and Kensuke as embodying different kinds of resilience, suggesting that each has what the other needs—Kensuke has the skills and knowledge to survive the island, while Michael possesses an unshakable sense of hope that fuels his desire to reconnect to the wider world. As a model of resilience and practical survival, Kensuke’s instruction allows Michael to develop similar traits and skills himself. He shows considerable strength and adaptability by creating a new life for himself after the horrors of war ravage his city and leave him stranded and alone. For example, he scavenges and repurposes objects from the warship to sustain his life on the island.
Michael evidences his courage by keeping his hope of rescue alive. His love for and connection to his parents—a defining element of his character—reminds Kensuke what it’s like to be part of a family. As Michael asserts: “I really felt, really believed, there was a chance my prayers would be answered, that this time I would open my eyes and see the Peggy Sue sailing back to rescue me” (48). After Michael moves into Kensuke’s cave, he still faces challenges that test his emotional resilience, but he also acquires additional survival skills, such as foraging his food and constructing a signal fire, learning not only to survive but to thrive. Together, Kensuke and Michael satisfy all of their basic needs for food, water, and shelter and also meet their higher-level need for companionship, belonging, and purpose. The self-sufficient lives that Kensuke and Michael lead on the island speak to the resilience of the human spirit.
The Importance of Ethical Relationships with Nature
Morpurgo emphasizes the importance of ethical relationships with the natural world through Kensuke’s bond with the orangutans and respect for the island. After witnessing humans inflicting destruction and suffering upon one another firsthand during his time as a navy doctor during World War II, Kensuke finds solace amidst the island’s natural beauty, reflecting: “I think, all my friends dead, all my family dead, and I alive. I not want to live. But soon I meet orangutans. They very kind to me. This very beautiful, very peaceful place. No war here, no bad people” (72). Through Kensuke’s connection with the orangutans, the author offers a model of an ethical relationship with nature. Kensuke learns from the animals, treats them with deep respect, and protects them from humans who would harm and exploit them. The character’s deep love for the apes challenges the socially constructed distance between humans and other animals. As Kensuke notes: “I have family here, orangutan family. Maybe killer men come again. Who look after them then?” (93). Kensuke’s deep and caring relationship with nature guides his actions and characterization and he instills the same respect and care for the island in Michael, passing this ethical relationship down from one generation to the next.
Throughout the novel, Michael’s experiences deepen his relationship with nature. Traveling around the world on the Peggy Sue allows him to engage with nature on a deeper, more personal level than he did back home in the United Kingdom. Seeing animals in their natural habitats in Africa, Australia, and South America magnifies the boy’s respect and wonder for his fellow creatures—he notes that on his family’s voyage: “We’re going to see elephants and lions in the wild. I can’t believe it” (23).
Michael’s life on the island removes the prescribed separation between the protagonist and nature that existed in his life in England and aboard the Peggy Sue. At first, he keeps a respectful and cautious distance from the orangutans, but he eventually befriends them with Kensuke’s help.
Michael’s ethical relationship with nature goes beyond passive observation and admiration. Under Kensuke’s tutelage, he refines his ability to express his love of nature through the visual arts, painting plants and animals on seashells. Kensuke’s mentorship gives him opportunities to offer his fellow creatures kindness and protection, such as when he watches over the baby turtles’ journey to the ocean, finding “several too weak to make the journey, and carr[ying] them down into the sea [them]selves” (84). Through the examples of Kensuke and Michael, Morpurgo encourages his young audience to love and defend nature.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence