Commentary on 'The Explorer's Daughter

Narwhals are portrayed as nutritious and beneficial consumables that local people eat and live on, while they’re hinted as mild and gentle creatures who ‘do not use the tusk to break through ice as a breathing hole, nor will they use it to catch or attack prey, but rather the primary use seems to be to disturb the top of the sea bed.’ Her statements once again bear characteristics of her confound thoughts, suggesting her capricious emotion towards the situation.

In the fifth paragraph, not only did the narrator manages to demonstrate penchant and venerability towards the hunters, but depicts the intense and heartening scene as ‘a vast, waterborne game with the hunters spread like a net around the sound.’ Smiley is used here to emphasis her concern as well as excitement on the situation in which she experiences. Moreover, there’s a repetition of ‘so’ when the hunter is portrayed to be ‘so close, and so brave’. It stresses the writer’s support of the man until she diverted to the other side, ‘at the same time my heart also urged the narwhal to dive, to leave, to survive’ she couldn’t bear and moreover accept what’s going to happen the next moment – one is going to lose and she would grieve for any of one of them.

Then the narwhals are personified to be able to ‘to talk to one another under the water.’ Clearly the writer attempts to illustrate them appealing and advocates for the poor creatures that are in danger here.

It’s certain the writer hopes to parry it when it comes to the moment – a decision to be made. ‘A dilemma’, as written, is what she considered of, and it is just and unjust, yes or no in her point of view. In fact, it stayed with her the whole time she was in Greenland. The final paragraph somehow manages to redeem the narwhals and pities the hunting of them, but actually it’s a justification for the local hunters, arguing the necessity of hunting in Greenland. Yet the writer attempts to exemplify the moral drawbacks of hunting narwhals and her own ambivalent emotions to set off the importance of hunting despite all the tough morals. The writer not only used effective writing devices to illustrate her ambivalent feelings but exemplified evidences and facts to strengthen it.