33 Daniel had had share his fantasies: how he’d be casually cleaning a pistol
when she was picked up for her first date; how he’d buy a chastity belt on the Internet. In none of those scenarios, though, had he ever really
considered how the sight of a boy with his proprietary hand around his daughter’s waist might make him want to run until his lungs burst p.21.
Daniel is pretty mad since he cannot do anything when he sees Jason’s hand is around Trixie’s waist. Moreover, for Daniel, Trixie has changed into a
terrifying girl after she dated Jason. Even Laura suggests Daniel not to be overprotective to Trixie because it will make Trixie become a disobedient
daughter. His wife reminded him that the tighter he kept Trixie on a leash, the more
she’d fight the choke hold… p.21. Laura’s suggestion has changed Daniel’s point of view. He starts to let
Trixie do whatever she wants. Consequently, it makes a distance between Trixie and Daniel. It seems that Daniel has lost Trixie for the second time. However, the
distance between them starts to disappear as Trixie and Jason’s conflict appears. When the conflict is getting complicated, he realizes that no one can protect Trixie
except him. Daniel had no idea what went on during the times Janice had met with
Trixie, but beside him, his daughter was shaking. “You can’t turn over the records,” she said.
“If we don’t, our director will be sent to jail,” Janice explained. “I’ll do it,” Daniel said. “I’ll go to jail in her place.” p.198
The dialog shows that Daniel will do anything to protect Trixie, though, he must take Trixie’s place in the jail. Unfortunately, he cannot do that since the
court will not accept his petition. Moreover, knowing the fact that Jason has the right to mount the defense makes Daniel understand that even the court cannot
34 protect his daughter. Therefore, it is only Daniel who can protect Trixie. It can be
seen from the following quotation. As he pulled Trixie in his arms, he understood: The law was not going to
protect his daughter, which meant that he had to p.198. As a father, Daniel really knows that he must protect his daughter no matter how
hard it is. This situation makes Daniel become more overprotective to Trixie since he is the only one who can protect Trixie now.
b. Mischievous
Daniel was the only white boy in a native Yup’ik Eskimo village called Akiak. Moreover, Daniel’s mother works as a teacher in a school in Akiak.
Trixie knew this much: Her father had been the only white boy in a native Yu’pik Eskimo village called Akiak. His mother, who raised him by herself,
had taught school there pp.133-134.
Besides, his childhood was not as beautiful as what the other children had. When Daniel lived in Akiak, he had only a best friend, Cane. “Daniel’s best and only
friend in the village was a Yu’pik boy named Cane…” p.40. It is because Daniel was a kass’aq which means a white kid that no one wanted to be his friend.
Therefore, most of the people in Akiak disliked Daniel. When he was a kid in Alaska, he had met Yup’ik Eskimos who hated him on
sight, because he was a kass’aq. It didn’t matter that he was six or seven, that hadn’t been the particular Caucasian who had cheated that person out of land
or reneged on a job or any of a hundred other grievances. All they saw was that Daniel was white, by association; he was a magnet for their anger p.82.
Daniel is a kass’aq who becomes the Yup’ik people’s source of anger. Hence, he always gets bullied. “Daniel spent most of his childhood waiting to leave. He was
a kass’aq, a white kid, and this was reason enough to be teased or bullied or
35 beaten” p.41. He does not only get bullied because he is a kass’aq but also he
has no father and he does not know how to do native things. All of his life, Daniel had been teased by the village kids – for not having a
father, for being kass’aq, for not knowing how to do native things like fish and hunt p.453.
Since Daniel was a child he had been through a hard life of being a bullying victim because of Yup’ik people’s hatred. According to Murphy 1995,
one way to know a character’s characteristic is from their reaction towards various situations p.166. Daniel’s reaction towards Yup’ik Eskimos’ hatred has made
him become a mischievous boy. Being a mischievous boy is his reaction because Daniel thought that it is the only way to stay alive in Akiak. It is started when
Daniel was fourteen. At that age, he had become a trouble-maker. “At fourteen, Daniel had been living in a different world and doing everything he could to fight,
lie, cheat, steal and brawl his way out of it” p.23. Another fact that Daniel was a trouble-maker who always got into a brawl is a quotation from page 266. It says
that “Every brawl a bully in Akiak, every fistfight with a drunk outside a bar, every window he’d smashed to get inside a locked door---“
Moreover, another fact that proves Daniel was a mischievous boy is when he was still a student, he liked to get into a trouble; he fought other boys from
Akiak. In that instant, he was standing again in the spring bog behind the school
in Akiak, striped with mud and blood, holding his fists high. During the fight, he’d broken two ribs, he had lost a tooth, he had opened a gash over
his left eye. He was weaving, but he wasn’t about to give in to the pain. Who else, Daniel had challenged, until one by one; their hot black gazes
fell to the ground like stones p.115.
