Song for a Whale

“The plan made sense to Ms. Conn because she thought Nina was the smartest person in class, and Nina thought she knew sign language. She’d checked out a library book about it, so that made her an expert. Some people have the kind of confidence that lets them get away with being clueless.”

Iris’s knowledge of Nina’s ignorance of sign language runs counter to her teacher’s belief. As the teacher and Nina are both part of the hearing world, they ignore Iris’s feelings and her experience of Nina’s attempts at sign language and instead assert their own logic. Iris resents Nina’s unfounded confidence and sees her pretense of knowing sign language after reading a book as a type of arrogance. All of this contributes to Iris’s feeling of being unheard.

“Blue 55 didn’t have a pod of friends or a family who spoke his language. But he still sang. He was calling and calling, and no one heard him.”

Iris feels Blue 55’s plight acutely because it’s so like her own experience in a school and family full of hearing people, who communicate in an entirely different way. The repetition of the whale’s calls expresses his sustained efforts to communicate and emphasizes how he’s continually rebuffed. The fact that the whale sings despite being unheard indicates that he’s confident that he has something to say and that he can participate.

“She leaned over, forcing me to see her, and signed with her hands right in my face. I couldn’t take it anymore. My face burned hotter. Everyone looked at me like I was the dumb one for not understanding.”

Nina’s insistence on signing right in front of Iris’s face offends Iris but seems like a gesture of helpfulness to her hearing peers. Although Nina signs nonsensically and is patronizing, Iris is the one the adults perceive as “dumb.” She feels isolated in a classroom full of people for whom all signs look the same.

“Since I didn’t know if I talked very well, I’d rather not do it. Plus, I never liked the way my voice felt. As much as I loved feeling sound from a radio speaker, vibrations in my throat annoyed me, as if they didn’t belong there. Kind of live how I loved electronics, but not my own ears.”

Iris is self-conscious about her voice, which her deafness prevents her from hearing. She’s extremely sensitive to the sensation of vibrations in her throat and finds them uncomfortable. She’d prefer to feel the vibrations of radios and get on with fixing them instead of talking. This shows how Iris’s methods of communication vary from those that are most common in the hearing world. However, Iris’s discomfort with her voice begins to change as she feels that she wants to use it to communicate with the whale.

“Most people were surprised when they found out I fixed old radios, but that was because most people don’t notice that sound moves. If it’s strong enough, it can move anything. Its waves can break glass or shake the ground or deafen a whale.”

Iris engages with sound by paying attention to its movement. She recognizes that by seeking sound through movement, she differs from most hearing people, who might find it odd that a girl who is Deaf is interested in radios. Kelly further builds a powerful image of sound as movement when she describes its power to cause drastic motions such as shattering glass or deafening a giant animal. The sublime imagery conveys Iris’s special and acutely sensitive relationship with sound.

“Lately it was like I needed a bridge to get to her. One of us would say something; then the conversation would fizzle out, and we were back to sitting there trying to come up with something else to say. […] Maybe Grandpa had been our bridge, and we didn’t notice it until he was gone.”

Iris, as the only member of her family who is Deaf, used to enjoy a close relationship with her maternal grandparents, who were also Deaf. However, after Grandpa’s death she finds it as difficult to communicate with Grandma as with the hearing people at school. The metaphor of the bridge indicates distance and an obstacle to communicating with Grandma. Iris worries that her late Grandpa was the bridge that enabled her intimacy with her Grandma and feels even more isolated. However, the real obstacle is Grandma’s grief, and Kelly sets up Grandma’s mental state as another aspect that heals when Iris seeks the whale.

“The smell of old radio. My favorite smell. It reminded me of attics and campfires and the antique books in Mr. Gunnar’s store. I’d read that the smell was just radio parts and dust warmed up by electricity, but it was more than that. It was like the radio was remembering every home it had ever been in.”

While Iris knows the scientific explanation behind her favorite radio smell, she can’t help but associate it with feelings of home and comfort. She anthropomorphizes the radio and likes to imagine this former antique in the homes of those who once loved it. Iris, who seeks a similar sense of home and belonging, enjoys the coziness the radio connotes and feels at home with it. Moreover, Kelly invokes the sense of smell, which links closely to memory, to indicate Iris’s emotional response to the electronics she discovered with her late Grandpa.

“Blue 55 had a map all his own. He traveled the same waters as some other whales, but at different times. Sometimes there were gaps in his route, when no microphone picked up his song. Either her wasn’t singing then or other noise in the ocean drowned out his calls. A dotted blue line on the map showed the best guess of where he was.”

The idea of Blue 55 having a map that is completely idiosyncratic but traveling in the same waters as other whales heightens the poignancy of his isolation. Being in the same water is a metaphor for being part of the same world as others, and his wish to connect with them while being in the same place at a different time signifies the misunderstandings that isolate him. His situation acts as a metaphor for Iris’s predicament, as she too is lonely among others. Blue 55’s disappearing off the map indicates the efforts that Iris must go to communicate with him.

“He added to the note, The best way to learn how something works is to take it apart and put it back together. I don’t know what made him think I was smart enough to do that, but he did. […] Without that store and Mr. Gunnar, I wouldn’t know I was good at anything.”

Iris cites Mr. Gunnar’s confidence that she was able to fix a radio as a key component in building her self-esteem. Whereas the traditional education system in her hearing school doesn’t make her feel smart, this extracurricular activity has the opposite effect, as Kelly hints that an unconventional, self-directed education is the kind that makes Iris thrive. Iris’s following Mr. Gunnar’s advice of taking radios apart to see how they work gifts her with problem-solving abilities that are advanced for her age.

“Something familiar yet different; a bit of his own song woven in with the new one. It was impossible to make the song exactly like 55’s, but I did my best to stretch out the notes or clip them so they’d match the pattern of his music. I’d read that whale songs were made up of units, like single moans, chirps, or cries put together to build phrases. A bunch of phrases made a theme. Like spoken words that make up sentences and then paragraphs.”

This passage displays Iris’s sensitivity to the diverse sounds that a whale song incorporates. Although she can’t hear, she uses her understanding of sound’s movement and her research on whales to approximate a tune. Iris’s necessary use of diverse modes of communication uniquely equips her to replicate the varied cadences of whale song. Later, when she adds her voice to the medley, she’ll truly be creating a patchwork. That Iris’s song requires the assistance of so many others indicates her more collaborative state of mind.

“I’d never thought about Deaf people having a history or where our language came from.”

Iris’s ignorance about the origins of ASL, the language she uses and takes for granted every day, indicates how disconnected she is from other Deaf people and their culture’s legacy. This contributes to the impression of her isolation.

“It took scientists a long time to figure out how whales make their sounds. They don’t open their mouths and sing like people do. The singing happens inside the spaces in their bodies, by pushing air into their throats and sinuses.”

Iris’s reflection that it took scientists a long time to figure out how whales sang parallels hearing people’s bafflement about her style of speech and communication. The enigmatic figure of the whale gives her an appreciation for diverse styles of communication. This passage connotes her desire to communicate with others as effectively as this mysterious animal.

“People who were desperate to communicate always found a way. I’d find a way.”

When Iris learns how people have used radio waves to communicate in the most desperate and unlikely circumstances, she’s inspired to not give up on her quest to find Blue 55 and play him her song. In comparing herself to others who have struggled to communicate, Iris indicates that she sees herself as a participant in a connected world rather than as isolated.

“Losing someone I’d never met wasn’t the same as losing Grandpa. The closest thing would be the touch to the heart, like something piercing it. But that could also mean something that’s touching or moving in a good way, because it’s so beautiful.”

Iris feels that she can’t find an ASL sign for the pain that describes coming close to seeing Blue 55 and missing out at the last hurdle. Although she knows that it isn’t the same as the bereavement she feels for her grandfather, she feels that the loss is in the same emotional region. When she considers making a sign like an arrow to the heart, she shows how moved she is by the whale’s story, as inspiration and loss are the mixed entity of her feeling. Here, Kelly shows the inadequacy of language to describe feelings.

“I was dying to tell someone what I was about to do. I’d never held onto a secret this big, and it was bursting to get out. I went ahead and signed it right there to the whole room. No one would understand anyway, so it was a way of letting the secret out while still keeping it.”

When Iris sets out on her secret whale-finding expedition with Grandma, she feels excited and grown-up. Her act of signing away the secret to a room of people who wouldn’t understand it provides emotional release without giving herself away. Here, Kelly shows one advantage of having a means of expression that few people understand. Still, a tone of bitter resignation is clear in Iris’s insistence that “no one would understand anyway,” as this sentiment encompasses not just the signs she’s making but the entire mission. In addition, this reveals an undertone of hurt at her family’s not recognizing the urgency of her mission.

“Closer to the ship, a whale shot up out of the water, then crashed down with a giant splash. It almost didn’t seem real. The whale was about the size of a school bus, and there he was flying out of the ocean. I turned to Bennie to ask, Did that really happen? The wonder on her face answered my question.”

Iris’s first whale sighting on the cruise ship to Alaska is a moment of wonder. The whale’s vastness and enormous splash are on a scale that Iris couldn’t even have imagined. Her disbelief is clear when she checks with Bennie to ensure that the situation is real. This moment connects Iris’s mission with the sublime.

“What was a whale without a pod? What was a whale without a whale song? He didn’t try to create a song by sending air flowing through his body. He kept his breath still. Air and space did not make music. Air was only air. Space was nothing more than space.”

This passage anthropomorphizes Blue 55 to convey the loneliness of his experience. He’s been driven to such despair that he’s stopped singing. The repetition of the words air and space conveys his nihilistic mood. It’s as though he wants to stop identifying as a whale and has given up on the hope that anyone will reach him. This passage creates sympathy for the whale and further invests Iris’s mission with poignancy.

“I’d wanted to make that trip by myself. For the first time I was happy that a plan of mine failed, so I could be right there with Grandma.”

This sentiment marks a turning point in Iris’s character, as she realizes that what makes her happy isn’t perfectly executing her own plans but being connected to others. She draws confidence from the fact that the trip has aided Grandma’s mental health and feels good about herself as a result.

“Before he changed course Blue 55 had finally been swimming toward a friend. I’d felt like we were in this together, both heading toward the place where we’d find each other. But it was just me, all along.”

When Iris finds that the whale has changed course, she feels let down and betrayed. She wonders if the telepathic communion she had felt thus far with the whale was just fantasy and feels more alone than ever. The act of swimming, literal in the whale’s case and metaphorical in Iris’s, recalls the earlier image of Blue 55 being in the same place as other whales but at different times. Iris is one of many connections he has missed.

“She raked her hands, as if they were claws, on the glacier and then straightened her fingers a little to draw softer waves—the scars on the ice melting. The new iceberg drifted so far away it was a speck in the ocean. ‘Time and distance smooth out the memory of what was lost.’ I didn’t know anymore if we were still talking about the iceberg, or about 55 and me, or my family, or Grandma and Grandpa. Maybe it was all those things.”

The experience of watching a glacier calving—and thereby losing a part of itself to the ocean—is profoundly emotional for Iris and Grandma. It speaks to the loss they feel when they’re separated from loved ones, whether because they’re deceased (as in Grandpa’s case), estranged (as in the case of Iris and her family), or unmet (as in Iris’s desire to see Blue 55). While Grandma’s signs offer a platitude of comfort and testify to human resilience, Iris sees how all the losses connect. In a way, the emotional character of the losses connects the family to one another even though they think they’ve become estranged.

“I’d been thinking about adding more of myself to the song. I wished I could share my own language with him, but that wasn’t possible. It would have to be enough that he could hear a little of my voice on the song I’d made, through the speaker I’d built. I didn’t like talking out loud in front of people, but for some reason I didn’t mind doing it for Blue 55.” 

The repetition of the word “I” in this passage indicates the extent to which Iris feels that her mission to reach Blue 55 is a personal project. It isn’t enough for her that she composed the song; she wants to be part of it too. Although using sign language would have been her first choice, she accepts that in this instance her voice will be more powerful. Her willingness to do what she doesn’t normally like doing for Blue 55 indicates her increased confidence and her bursting desire to communicate with the whale she loves.

“I thought back to what Tristan said, when her reminded me that Blue 55 wasn’t one of my radios. Maybe I wasn’t doing this for 55. He thought I was trying to fix the whale, to make myself feel better. No, that wasn’t it. He did have a song that no one else could tune in to, but he didn’t need fixing any more than I did. I pushed the doubts aside. Of course I was doing this for him.”

An email from her brother, Tristan, makes Iris contemplate whether her mission is selfish, as she tries to get personal satisfaction from “fixing” the whale, as she does with her old radios. However, Iris is certain that nothing is wrong with the whale, just as nothing is wrong with her for being Deaf. In accepting the whale as he is, Iris accepts herself. She thinks that neither of them needs fixing; they just need some help communicating. While Iris completes her mission to make the whale feel less lonely, she subsequently feels less lonely herself.

“I floated in the bay, staring into the whale’s dark eye, impossibly small for such a huge animal. No bigger than the palm of my hand. But when I gazed into its depths, it was like 55 was showing me everything he’d ever let and everything he’d ever seen.”

This passage conveys the intimacy of Iris’s connection with the whale. The contrast of the palm-sized eye in comparison to the huge body indicates how close she has come to him. Aligning with the metaphor of eyes as the windows of the soul, Iris feels that by looking into the whale’s eyes she knows everything about him. The collapse of chronological time, whereby she feels that she can see the whole of the whale’s past, introduces a supernatural element to their meeting, as though they’re long-lost soulmates who have finally found each other.