Boundaries

The three literary pieces, Robert Frost’s Mending Wall, Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Game, and Yusef Komunyakaa’s Slam, Dunk, and Hook all share one common theme, boundaries. This common tie among the three pieces helps relate them to the novel The Whale Rider. In The Whale Rider there are boundaries between men and women and myth and reality. A boundary is not just a brick wall; it can be a railroad track, a basketball game, hanging out with friends, or anything else that clears one’s mind from all that he or she has to deal with. Boundaries can either keep people confined and away from the real world or they can provide for a new framework in which to live and work.

Robert Frost’s Mending Wall is based on a stonewall that separates the speaker from his neighbor. Over the winter the stonewall deteriorates and is rebuilt by the speaker and his neighbor come the spring. The speaker makes it clear that there should be no stonewall because there is simply no need for it. On either side of the wall there are no cows to be contained only pine and apple trees. The elderly neighbor insists on sticking with the tradition of rebuilding the wall saying, “Good fences make good neighbors (line 26).” The speaker contradicts himself in the poem by initiating the rebuilding of the deteriorating wall by planning a date to do so with his neighbor. If he doesn’t believe there should be a wall separating the two in the first place, why is he so persistent on calling his neighbor and planning a date? Koro Apriana is equivalent to the Mending Wall. Nanny Flowers is like the winter weather that comes in, tries to break him down, and prove to him that Kahu is the one meant to be the next chief. However, Koro continues to build up his faith year after year that there really is a male out there capable of taking over his leadership role.

Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Game is based on a young girl named Cruz, who is humpbacked and is kept in her house to protect her and her mother from humiliation. Cruz’s mother is her barrier to the outside world. The speaker of the poem, Cruz’s friend, looks past her malformation and treats her as if she was any other one of her friends. The two played Cruz’s favorite game “Family” together everyday and the speaker praised Cruz for all that she did. Eventually as time went on the game became old and the girls grew up. It was now time for Cruz to face her malformation as well as the outside world. Cruz’s boundary runs parallel to Koro’s boundary that prevented him from admitting Kahu was the one meant to be chief. Once Kahu saved both whales’ lives as well as Koro’s, Koro knew he could no longer deny that Kahu was put on this earth to be the sacred whale rider. He was finally able to overcome the boundary he put between men and women.

Yusef Komunyakaa’s Slam, Dunk, and Hook focuses on the talents of young basketball players with a love for the game. Basketball was their escape, their barrier from the outside world. While getting lost in the game they would play their hearts out and give it their all. The speaker states, “We had moves we didn’t know we had (line 34-35).” However, once the game was over the real word was outside waiting for them. When one of the players, Sonny Boy’s, mom passed away, “He played nonstop all day, so hard our backboard splintered (line 23-25).” The length of the game was Sonny Boy’s barrier; it cleared his mind for the time being. However, once the game was over he had to face the death of his mother and not having her here on earth with him. The beaching of the whales in The Whale Rider is parallel to the death of Sonny Boy’s mom’s death. Koro is his own boundary that prevents him from seeing that Kahu is the only one able to help the whales. Kahu proves this to Koro when she becomes part of the myth and gets the whales back into the water. It is here that Koro discovers women are capable of doing what men cannot.

At the end of the day what it all comes down to is facing the outside world beyond our barriers. A barrier is only temporary. From the three poems as well as The Whale Rider we can grasp that all barriers last for different amounts of time. Unfortunately, the outside world will always be there waiting for our barriers to break down.