What is the theme of survival in Julie of the Wolves?

Summer or winter, tundra or living room, Julie of the Wolves is consistently concerned with survival. On the most obvious level, the story of a thirteen-year-old girl alone in the wilderness without food will be concerned with survival. Indeed, in the first pages Miyax concentrates on survival even to the exclusion of her original goal, walking to Point Hope to catch the North Star. Her observation of the wolves is motivated entirely by her hope that they will help her survive, but all her activities independent of the wolves, such as building shelter, searching for food and marking paths, has the same goal, survival.

Yet Julie's life since her separation from her father Kapugen has equally been an exercise in survival. Placed in new surroundings, first Nunivak and then Barrow, she has attempted to blend in, like the Arctic hare and least weasel who change the color of their coats to blend better with brown tundra or white snow in order to survive. Like an animal changing its coat, Miyax changes her name and her language. She copies the styles and opinions of the girls her age, including contempt for the old ways of the Eskimo, ways which were adapted to surviving in the wilderness. Adapting to the new ways, Julie dreams of visiting and living with her pen pal Amy in San Francisco. After her necessary return to the old ways to help her survive the winter, though, and after witnessing the murder of Amaroq by an airplane-borne hunter, Miyax rejects everything new, planning to return to living an entire traditional life. Imitating the traditional life of the seal camp, which she once scorned, she finds that even such traditions as the shaman's dance have survival value. She is "warm as the center of a lemming's nest." (p. 126) Her brief reunion with Kapugen, though, shows her that the new ways have made it impossible to survive the traditional way. Game has become scarce, and survival will mean adaptation - and loss.