8221; 14).In the 1980s, feminism became preoccupied with “identity politics”. This meant a woman identifying herself according to certain categories-straight, lesbian, Marxist, disabled, fat, and so on-as if such labels were sufficient to define a person’s identity, social roles and rights (“The Challenge of Local Feminism” 42).Island of the Blue Dolphins is a good example of feminism, as Karana proves that women can do a man’s job. Earlier in the story, when all of her people were still on the island, the women were the ones who gathered the food, and made the clothing and watched over the children. The men were there to do the hunting, fighting, and protect the women from the wild animals. They built houses, and did the hard labor work. Karana was forced to do this on her own, without the help from any men. Although she was scared at times and wasn’t quite sure if she was doing the right thing, she learned through her experiences, and before long, it became natural to her. There were some things she physically could not do because of her size and stregnth, but she found other ways to get the job done. She learned many of the things she did by merely observing her father and the other men on her island. She learned quickly the best way to make a house, hunt game, and she even learned to become one with the wild dogs.Time doesn’t really have an effect on this story because it is based on the true story of the ancient woman, known as the lone woman of San Nicholas, who was left alone on an island hundreds of years ago. Although this book was written fairly recently, the fact that it is based on a story that happened years ago, that shows that this book would have been written back then. A flaw that this book may have is that the issue of feminism probably isn’t taught to children in a direct way. They can get from the book that girls can do things on their own, but they p...
