Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

Julie of the Wolves...by Jean Craighead George

Jean Craighead George's "Julie of the Wolves"

The title of my book is "Julie of the Wolves" by Jean Craighead George. It was published by Harper & Row in 1972. The book has 155 pages. George focuses on discussing the life of an Eskimo girl named Miyax (her English name is Julie) who feels that her community is wrong in trying to decide her fate and resorts to running off into the wild and befriending a pack of wolves and a bird in an attempt to survive. The book is apparently meant to relate to the feelings Miyax experiences as she gradually comes to acknowledge that the world is no longer able to live in harmony with the natural world. People exploit their position and Miyax is disgusted as she sees that she cannot stop this process.

The story takes place in Alaska in the tundra, in Barrow, and in Miyax's childhood village. The story follows the main character as she is lost and develops a relationship with a pack of wolves led by Amaroq, a regal wolf. It then proceeds to recount Miyax's background and returns to the present as the girl returns to her father's village. Miyax vitually experiences a maturing process as she sees that she has to abandon the beautiful illusion of living in harmony with the natural world in order to adapt to change, just as her father went from being a traditional hunter to hunting from the helicopter.

The main character of this story is Miyax, a thirteen-year-old Eskimo girl who feels distressed as a result of society pressuring her into taking on attitudes that she does not identify with. This influences her to abandon her community with the purpose of travelling South in hope that she will be reunited with her pen friend, Ann. The girl slowly but surely comes to accept that it would be impossible for her to get to San Francisco and she sees much of her dreams destroyed as a result of time passing rapidly. She loses her animal friends and she sees that her home is nothing as she believed it had been.

The plot involves Miyax leaving Borrow with the purpose of reaching San Francisco, where she will be reunited with her pen pal, Ann. The girl takes on a pack of wolves as companions in order to survive in the Alaskan tundra. As the wolves leave her in order to take on their nomadic ritual she befriends a bird named Tornait. She comes to see that conditions worsened significantly (at one time she encounters a Grizzly bear) and this is further aggravated by the news of hunters killing Amaroq. The girl comes to believe that it would be impossible for her to ever integrate in the so-called civilized world and decides to return to her father's Eskimo village.