The History of Sound: Stories

The companion story of “Radiolab: ‘Singularities,’” “The Auk” delves into the great auk mystery Anna encounters in the previous story, and together, these two stories capture The Clarifying Power of History. In Anna’s account, the great auk is a mystery she never solves, but that awakens her to the magic and beauty of being alive. In “The Auk,” Will Hunt’s account provides insight into the great auk image Anna discovered while underscoring how the past might impact the present. Will’s impromptu decision to photograph the auk for his own purposes and amusement would years later offer Anna the same hope he’d derive from the bird, too.

For Will, discovering the taxidermied great auk in the attic of his home offers him a sense of possibility. He doesn’t know why his great-great-grandfather stuffed the now-extinct bird, but having the bird in his possession offers him a resolution to his despair. In both stories, the great auk is symbolic of mystery and hope. It is an artifact from an irretrievable era in history. For Anna, the auk lets her believe in the possibility of making a new discovery and ushers her toward her fate in Mule Harbor. For Will, the stuffed auk affords him a sense of control that he otherwise doesn’t have amidst his trying circumstances. Indeed, both his business and his wife’s health are failing. There is nothing that Will can do to save the inn or to cure Nora’s early-onset dementia. The auk, however, alleviates his financial worries by offering him a new pastime and simultaneously reignites his wife’s spirits. Will and Nora renew their former bond—a connection Will thought that her illness had stolen for good. Through the characters’ experience of aging and illness, the story contributes to the collection’s theme of The Universality of Love, Loss, and Longing.

The taxidermied bird becomes Will’s means of holding onto the life he’s afraid of losing to time and circumstances. His internal monologue about the stuffed auk authenticates this notion: While he doesn’t “understand why Sam had stuffed this one,” he guesses that his great-great-grandfather noticed the birds “were declining and wanted to hold on to it—like when [Will’s] mother used to press field thistle into her Bible just before the frost” (212). To stave off the impending loss of the auk species, Sam stuffed the bird, granting himself the illusion of control over the passage of time. The same is true for Will: He decides to withhold the truth about the auk from Nora because as long as she believes that the great auks are still alive, Will can hold onto her. He understands that loss and longing are unavoidable facets of the human experience but uses the auk to avoid confronting this truth in the present. The auk lets him believe in the possibility of suspending time and thus enjoying life before Nora’s death.