Animal Threat The Natural Problems Faced by Karana
fresh water to drink. Therefore, those people gather and try to find a better solution. In short, people cannot live without water, especially fresh water. This
condition is reflected in the following quotation.
For many days after that the village was quiet. People went out only to gather food and came back to eat in silence. Some wished to leave and go
in their canoes to the island called Santa Catalina, which lies far off to the east, but others said that there was little water on that island.
In the end a council was held and it was decided to stay at Ghalas-
at. O’Dell, 1960: 25- 26
The second scarcity refers to the lack of trees. The Island of the Blue Dolphins
has a limited number of trees. It can happen because humans neither treat the trees well nor get interest to plant the tree in the island, especially the Aleut people. It is
also worsen because they do not have any knowledge to cultivate trees and other plants. In contradictory, they tend to need trees or woods to make many things
like canoe, bow, basket and many other things. Therefore, they utilize and try to find any tree that grows wildly. The situation of limited trees in the island can be
found in the following datum. The bow and arrows took more time and caused me great difficulty. I had a
bowstring, but wood which could be bent and yet had the proper strength was not easy to find. I searched the ravine for several days before I found it,
trees being very scarce on Island of the Blue Dolphins . O’Dell, 1960: 25-
26 In addition, the quotation proves that the existence of trees or woods is very
important for Karana in order to make a bow and some arrows. These bows and arrows are very important to protect her from the wild dogs and red foxes which
threaten Karana’s lives and belongings. Sometimes, Karana also has to live with a limited amount of foods. The
scarcity of foods happens because there are many obstacles which make Karana
cannot hunt neither hunt, dig nor find them. Moreover, she has to feed Rontu, her dog and Mon-a-nee, her otter with bigger amount of foods. These foods can be
abalones, shellfish, roots, scarlet apples, and cactus. As she can neither cultivate nor breed them, she only can depend on the nature. In other words, she relies upon
the availability of those food in the nature. The food scarcity makes her become so miserable as she needs to limit what she eats.
The only thing that worried me was that all the abalones I had gathered in the summer were gone.
I would need to live from day to day on what I could
catch, trying to get enough on the days when I could fish to last through the times when I could not.
Through the first part of the winter, before Mon-a-nee swam away, this was sometimes hard to do. Afterwards it was not so hard and Rontu and I
always had enough eat . O’Dell, 1960: 150
Thus, she has to starve and struggle against her own ego. She sacrifices her own self for the lives of hers, Rontu and Mon-a-nee. She has to work harder and look
for enough food for the three of them. Thus, she learns how to solve this problem day by day.