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Upon reading Ahab’s Wife and starting in the middle of the story, I was confused. Una is a complex character whose persona is highly dependent on both the person she was in the past and on the person she will be. I found it frustrating to read only certain snippets of her life and desired to know her whole story. I wanted to know why she was following Giles and Kit onto a boat and why she felt the need to play dress up. I wanted to know the dark details of her past that were hinted at so subtly in our chose passage. Lastly, I wanted to know about her future; her life with Ahab and beyond. So I’ve started to read the novel from the beginning and will continue to the end.

Despite my interest in the novel, I cannot relate to Una at all. Other than the fact that we are both teenage women, we have nothing in common. But perhaps it is this fact that so draws me to Naslund’s character. I’ve simply never encountered such a woman and I am highly fascinated by each move she makes. She seems both more rational than any man thus far mentioned, yet intensely mad and reckless (as her determination to up and leave her family and her increased desire for food and Kit’s company show). At the moment, she is an enigma that I want to learn more about.

Superficially, this novel relates to the course in that it mentions cannibalism and a certain bit of the omnivore’s dilemma (as her family does not eat the animals they own unless they die of natural causes). Perhaps more profoundly, the novel touches upon the subject of choice. Una seems to be choosing her own destiny. She leaves her Aunt and Uncle’s to follow two men, dresses as a boy, works on a ship, eats human flesh, marries Kit, survives, survives, survives. She does not let the ethics of her cannibalism tear her mind apart, though she could have easily succumbed to the madness within as did Kit and Giles. These are choices, and our course veered onto this topic and never quite abandoned it. However, I think I shall need to read a bit further into Naslund’s novel in order to complete my thoughts. Perhaps Una isn’t choosing her own destiny. Perhaps she was always going to be with Ahab? Is this fate?