51 pages • 1-hour read
Zia
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Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and child abuse.
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and child abuse.
Zia, a 14-year-old Nicoleño girl, lives with her younger brother Mando in the Santa Barbara Mission in California. The two often spend their mornings on the beach, gathering blue clams and bringing them back to the Mission to cook soup. One morning, the siblings discover a stranded boat on the shore with the faded sign, Boston B Y, imprinted on its side. Mando suggests they cannot take it to the Mission because someone might steal it. He says they should hide it in the San Felipe lagoon. The two siblings float the boat to the lagoon and find what Zia characterizes as a “haunted cave.” They recall scary tales about the lagoon and the cave, which is believed to be home to bats and a large snake. The children hide the boat in the cave and return to the Mission.
Chapter 2 Summary
Following the church service, Zia goes to Father Vicente for a confession. Zia considers Father Vicente a kind man, and the two get along well. Zia discusses finding the boat. Father Vicente says it belongs to Boston Boy, a whaler that hunts beyond Santa Rosa Island. Its crew sometimes visits the Mission. Zia wonders whether the boat now belongs to her or the ship, emphasizing she did not steal it. Father Vicente suggests that, according to the law of the sea, the boat belongs to her. Zia tells him that Mando is the captain, and they plan to go fishing together. Father Vicente says that Mando is young and should never go to sea alone.
Mando goes to Father Merced for confession but says nothing about the boat. Zia warns him that he should never take the boat alone. Mando spends hours crafting an oar. On Sunday morning, the two siblings return to the lagoon. Mando erases the former name and paints the name Island Girl for Zia because she always dreams about going to the Island of the Blue Dolphins to find their aunt Karana.
Chapter 3 Summary
Zia and Mando secure fishing equipment. After fixing the boat, Mando suggests they should go to the Island of the Blue Dolphins, find Karana, and bring her home. Zia wonders if she’s still there, and Mando considers that she might be dead. Zia remembers that Captain Nidever, a white man, saw footsteps on the island a year ago and suspects they belong to Karana. Mando says he will ask the gods Mukat and Zando for advice but worries the priests will not allow them to go. Zia becomes angry, determined to make the trip. She knows nobody travels to the farthest island beyond Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa except Captain Nidever. Zia decided to leave Pala, the Cupeño village where she lived with Mando for a time, because she has always wanted to travel to the island and rescue Karana.
Zia recalls how the priests convinced their chief to bring the people to the Mission. They promised the tribe would be treated well, have food and fertile land, and would be taught Spanish and Christianity. The chief initially refused, saying that the tribe’s gods are different and the beach offers enough for their survival. Zia remembers that the tribe fished every summer and stored enough food for the winter. The chief informed his people about the fathers’ promises and suggested they could return home if they disliked the place. The priests claimed it was time for everyone to live together. Three days later, the tribe relocated.
Zia learned about Karana after her mother’s death and decided to come to Santa Barbara because of its proximity to the Island of the Blue Dolphins. Karana was left behind on the island after she jumped from the ship that came to relocate the tribe to the Mission. Zia considers finding Karana, her and Mando’s last relative, a “silent promise” to herself (19).
Chapter 4 Summary
Zia visits Captain Nidever to ask about Karana. He says he saw Karana and her footsteps on the island but never talked to her. Zia asks how to travel to the island. The captain describes a narrow channel between Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz. Zia informs him she plans to travel to the island on a boat with her brother. Captain Nidever knows she is a strong girl, but suggests they stay home because the sea is dangerous. He doubts they can make the trip. He says he will visit the island by the end of the summer to trade with the Chumash tribe and find Zia’s aunt himself.
Zia finds Mando at the Mission, and they continue planning their trip. Mando suggests they could survive on whatever they find in the sea, but Zia has already saved food for the journey. Days later, Captain Nidever visits them, insisting the trip is a bad idea, but he gives them instructions and a compass for guidance. He emphasizes they can return and try again if the sea becomes dangerous.
Chapter 5 Summary
Zia and Mando leave at night and reach the coast by dawn. Zia sees the island on the horizon but notices the tumultuous sea between it and Santa Rosa. Mando prepares his fishing line to catch espadas as they travel. Zia thinks he only cares about fishing. Moments later, Mando catches a fish, but both are unsure what it is. Its strength makes their boat rock. The fish swims toward the Island of the Blue Dolphins, slowly dragging the boat, but the line moves and the boat turns toward Santa Cruz again. The siblings are too tired to row, and the fish continues to pull them off course. Zia is angry, reminding Mando that fishing is not their purpose. She wants to cut the line. The pressure finally relaxes as the fish swims more slowly.
Chapter 6 Summary
Mando brags, thinking about the praise he will receive for bringing the fish back to the Mission. During the night, Zia can’t sleep. At dawn, she carefully observes the hooked fish and pulls it higher up. She realizes it is a marlin. The fish remains still, and Zia sees it looking at her. She feels strange, seeing the “surprise and submission” in its eyes (41). Zia takes Mando’s knife and cuts the line to free the marlin. She watches it swimming away and disappearing into the sea.
In the morning, Zia steers the boat toward the Santa Barbara coast and the Mission. When Mando awakens, she says the fish is gone. When he sees that the line is cut, Zia asks him to consider how he would feel if he had a hook in his mouth for a whole day. They argue about the fish but decide to continue their trip.
Chapter 7 Summary
Near Santa Rosa Island, Zia and Mando notice a big whaling ship with dead whales floating on its sides. The ship is the Boston Boy. The children hope they will not recognize their boat. They return to the cove, but soon a boat with four white men approaches. The men question them about the boat, realizing it is the one they lost. The children assert that it belongs to them by the law of the sea as Father Vicente said. One of the men suggests they could take the children back to the ship to help with the work. Without further conversation, they tie their boat with a rope and lead it to the ship, instructing the children to row. The children speak to each other using their native language so the men will not understand. Zia warns Mando not to use his knife because the white men will kill them. Mando vows to use it at night, saying he will speak to Mukat, their god. On the ship, the men lead Zia to the kitchen and order her to clean potatoes. She sees Mando at noon again, exhausted. His face is black with smoke after tossing blubber into pots.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
Zia is the protagonist and first-person narrator of O’Dell’s story. Her point of view as a 14-year-old Indigenous girl dominates the retrospective narrative. In contrast to Karana, the protagonist of O’Dell’s first novel who is premised on a historical character, Zia is a fictional figure that expands the narrative and thematic scope, allowing the author to explore the Indigenous experience under the Spanish Mission system in early 19th-century California through the perspective and coming-of-age journey of a young female protagonist.
In this section, O’Dell establishes the protagonist’s primary goal—her quest to reunite with her aunt Karana on the Island of the Blue Dolphins—which serves as the primary engine for the first section of the plot. Zia grows up with her brother Mando in the Santa Barbara Mission, and the two siblings are each other’s main company. Since the Mission depends exclusively on the unpaid labor of relocated Indigenous communities, including children like Zia and Mando. O’Dell highlights the children’s resilience, resourcefulness, and adaptability, laying the groundwork for his thematic exploration of Indigenous Resistance to Colonial Oppression. For example, Zia and Mando still maintain a connection to their Indigenous culture, despite their forced relocation. Zia remembers the fishing traditions of her community, recalling a sense of home and belonging:
We stayed on the beach, which was pretty and had white sand, and fished and dug for clams. We netted wild birds that came to a lagoon near where we camped and roasted them in a pit that we dug and covered with seaweed. Until late summer we lived there on the beach (16).
Even at the Mission where Indigenous religious and cultural rituals are prohibited, Zia and Mando continue traditional customs like gathering clams and spending time on the beach, maintaining a connection to their heritage. This conscious connection to her Indigenous roots pushes Zia to reunite with Karana, her last surviving kin, defying colonial attempts to dismantle her identity and self and emphasizing historical Colonial Injustices Against Indigenous Peoples. While critics argue that, at times, the narrative underplays the depth of exploitation and oppression within the Spanish Mission system, it emphasizes Zia and Mando’s desire for freedom in the children’s determination to travel to the Island of the Blue Dolphins, defying the priests and Captain Nidever’s mandates.
Despite their bond, the siblings each view their means of liberation differently, reflecting their different personalities and worldviews. Mando finds hope in individual achievement like catching a fish during their voyage for which he hopes to receive praise and gratitude. In contrast, Zia asserts her independence by searching for her lost relative, foreshadowing Zia’s dynamic character arc and introducing The Struggle for Cultural Preservation and Survival as a central theme in the story. The boat that Zia and Mando find that formerly belonged to the whaler Boston Boy acts as a symbol for reclaiming the control and agency that the Spanish Mission system attempts to strip from them. The island, a symbol of Zia's connection to her family, heritage, and culture, connects Zia’s quest to the broader struggle for the survival of Indigenous communities against colonialism and cultural erasure. When Mando erases the name Boston Boy from the boat and writes the name Island Girl for Zia, his gesture becomes an act of cultural reclamation. Finding her last surviving relative is Zia’s “silent promise” to herself, indicating her desire for a sense of belonging through the reclamation of her ancestral past and cultural identity (19).
In O’Dell’s thematic framework, the challenges and obstacles that Zia and Mando encounter on their journey are metaphors for the colonial injustice perpetuated against Indigenous communities. O’Dell uses vivid imagery, describing the sea’s “big waves” as “humps that looked like hills” (29). The metaphor emphasizes Zia’s struggle as an immense one, indicating the complexity of her coming-of-age journey. The tumultuous ocean, impeding the children from crossing to the island, symbolizes the challenging process of reclaiming her identity and cultural past. The children navigate a colonial space when they encounter the Boston Boy whaler during their voyage. The sailors recognize their boat and take their children to the ship against their will, subjugating them to forced servitude and unpaid labor. The children’s exploitation—a form of colonial injustice— thwarts their trip to the island just as cultural erasure and exploitation impede the ability of Indigenous peoples to maintain their autonomy and connection to their history, heritage, and identity. O’Dell highlights that Zia and Mando do not protest their capture and endure harsh treatment on the whaler, making the pragmatic choices necessary to fight for their survival.
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