Orphan Island

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Finding One’s Place Within a Group

The ability to function well as part of a group is extremely important in Orphan Island—only nine children live on the island, and they have no way to leave (until it’s their “time”) and no contact with other people from the outside world. It seems extremely unlikely that any one child could survive and thrive alone on the island; therefore, it’s essential that each of them remain part of the group while living there. Of course, the children disagree with each other sometimes, just as siblings or family members would, but some struggle more than others to keep peace within the group or find a specific role that they’re well suited for. The protagonist, Jinny, is one of the characters who finds it difficult to function as part of a group, especially when the needs and preferences of the others seem to conflict with her own. However, ultimately, Jinny and the others all learn that the needs of the group are greater than individual needs and that sometimes individual needs must be put on hold for the benefit of the group.

Although all the children eventually learn to prioritize the group’s needs over their individual needs, this doesn’t mean that they give up their individual identities or the traits that make them unique. On the contrary, the children that function best as part of the group recognize what traits and abilities of theirs are uniquely useful to the group and cultivate those skills. For example, Ben knows he’s good at cooking and making rational leadership decisions; he uses these skills daily to help the group. Joon is fast, agile, and athletic, so she builds fires and leads “fetches,” scavenging the island for food and supplies. Oz and Jak are also athletic and full of energy, so they catch fish for everyone to eat. These children don’t need to forfeit their own special characteristics and interests, but they do need to learn how to channel them into functions that help the group overall. Thus, the athletic children don’t just run around for fun; they collect food and supplies while adventuring. This concept is symbolized through the imagery of the cabins, which each have “a single window, like an unblinking eye, gazing out to sea” (29). In addition, the idea of individual responsibility to the group foreshadows how leaving is actually one of the important roles each child eventually must fulfill to ensure the well-being of the island group.

Certain roles aren’t based on a person’s abilities but are instead based on their age; the role of “Elder” comes with various responsibilities that are new to Jinny, and she struggles with this, apparently unwilling to adapt to what the change requires of her. Although she embraces her duty to protect Ess, she gives up on teaching her to swim and read, feeling resigned that she’s a “bad teacher” and not trying to learn how to be a good one. She also completely neglects her duty to teach Ben all the “Elder Lessons” that Deen taught her. Since she doesn’t want to learn how to be a better teacher, Jinny lets others pick up the slack. This is part of what helps her realize the importance of functioning well as part of a group. When she neglected her job of teaching Ess to read and swim, others stepped in and did these things for her. Seeing how others help the group apparently makes Jinny want to become more helpful herself, and she adjusts her attitude to consider everyone’s well-being. In reality, the welfare of all the children is intertwined, so focusing only on herself or only on Ess isn’t effective and hurts everyone rather than helping one person.

The Increased Responsibility of Maturity

In the story of Orphan Island, all the kids shoulder more responsibilities than most real children because no adults are present to complete tasks that they’d normally do, such as cooking, teaching young ones to read and swim, keeping others safe, gathering food and supplies, fishing and gutting fish, cleaning, and providing comfort. The children on the island all “grow up” quickly out of necessity and learn a sense of responsibility toward each other because they’re the only people on the isolated island. The children think of themselves as a family, one that shifts each year to welcome a new youngest member and bid farewell to the eldest. As a result, the children can’t simply settle into one established role but must periodically adapt to new social dynamics and group needs that evolve with each annual “Change.” Each new stage in maturity requires adjustments, one of which is an increased level of responsibility toward the other kids on the island.

At first, as a “Care,” each child is youngest and has the least amount of responsibility toward the others given the initial lack of experience and knowledge, which they gradually gain from the others. Still, even the Cares must make sacrifices for the supposed betterment of the group, such as forfeiting their shoes and their old clothes, plus learning to help with chores. After one year, a Care’s Elder leaves, and the Care becomes a regular member of the group, living in a separate cabin, contributing more to chores, and sometimes helping teach the new Care. After several more years, that child becomes the second-oldest child on the island and takes lessons from the Elder to prepare to become the leader and, effectively, the adoptive “parent” to that year’s new toddler. Finally, the child becomes the Elder, taking on the duty of ensuring that everyone will be okay to continue on when the next Elder takes over.

Jinny accepts her responsibility to be Ess’s Elder in some ways but struggles to be everyone else’s Elder. It takes her longer than others to fully adjust to this role and complete her duties to care for both Ess and the others. She relies on Joon, Oz, Jak, and Eevie to teach Ess to read, swim, and fish. She neglects giving Ben any Elder Lessons, though he manages to learn from distant observation. Most notably, Jinny neglects her duty to leave, which, she initially fails to realize, actually ensures the well-being of the other kids. Whereas Jinny thinks she has a responsibility to stay behind to care for Ess, her doing so causes dangerous animals, weather conditions, and lack of food to plague the island residents. Finally, Jinny reaches a level of maturity where she fully embraces her responsibility toward others, taking Ben’s advice: “You can’t just do whatever you feel like whenever you want. It’s not fair” (156). The final step is not becoming the Elder but leaving and passing the torch of Elder to the next child. By leaving, Jinny continues to care for the other children by seeking medicine for Loo and (she hopes) removing the dangers that have recently come to the island.

The Importance of Progress Despite the Unknown

In the author’s Afterword to Orphan Island, she notes that the first draft of the novel included a prologue that explained many of the answers Jinny never learns in the published version of the novel. For example, the prologue explained who sends the kids to the island and why, as well as where they go after leaving the island. For thematic reasons, Snyder removed this information from the final version of the novel. She explains that children must often move into new houses or be placed in new family situations without fully understanding why or what’s going on. The children’s lack of knowledge about who sent them to the island is meant to mimic the general lack of knowledge that kids sometimes have about their changing living situations or family dynamics.

In general, the children all enjoy living on the island and view it as a wonderful place. However, obviously, some of them find it difficult to not know why they’ve been sent there or where they’ll go when they leave. For much of the novel, Jinny is on a mission to hunt down answers to these questions. The questions seem even more important once Jinny learns that Abbie Ellis’s mother knowingly and purposely sent her children to the island, suggesting that the other kids might have parents, too. However, according to the author, this is actually not important and is simply a distraction that prevents Jinny from doing the right thing. Jinny allows her selfish desire—to know why she and the other kids were sent to this island with no adults—to interfere with her responsibility of taking care of the other kids, which for some reason belongs to her as a preteen and not to the adults who are their parents. She reflects that the letter creates “[a] question bigger than a question. A mystery. A hunger, burning slowly…It look[s] sweet, with its flowers, but it [is]n’t. This letter [i]s powerful, dangerous” (164-65). This imagery is negative and implies that thinking about this mystery will cause pain and danger.

Some of the children on the island (such as Ben and Joon) don’t seem bothered at all by the mysteries behind where they are, why they’re here, who controls the magic boat, why the island is magic, whether the rest of the world is also magic, and where children go when they leave. These children are depicted as superior to Jinny—as not only smarter, more capable, and more responsible but also as having better moral judgment. Although suggesting that knowledge is dangerous seems like a counterproductive theme for a children’s book, it’s fairly common. Rather than wasting her time trying to find answers, Jinny apparently should have just gotten in the magic boat that leads to a mystery place or possibly death because that’s part of her duty. If anything, it’s true that people must grow up, whether they want to or not, and that this comes with some ambiguity. Although the specific situation in the book would arguably warrant investigation, that isn’t the position the novel or the author takes. On the contrary, even Jinny thinks that the information in Abbie’s letter to her mom is “dangerous” and doesn’t share it with anyone because it would upset them (until the end, when she silently passes it off to Ben to figure out on his own). The novel seems to suggest that going along with tradition, even when it seems unjust, is better than questioning it or acting differently than others do.