54 pages • 1 hour read
Karen HesseThe Music Of Dolphins
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 14-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary
Sandy tells Mila that her “rescuers” named her “Mila” because it derives from the Spanish word for “miracles” (milagros). Indeed, Sandy continues, Mila’s existence is in itself miraculous because she survived in the ocean for 13 years.
Mila hears music for the first time. The first composition she listens to is by Peter Winter. Mila feels that music too is a miracle. As its sound waves gently envelop her, Mila begins to cry and then to dance. Mila wants to share this experience with Shay, but when she takes Shay’s hands and tries to dance with her, she realizes that Shay is not having the same emotional reaction to it.
Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary
Mila plays her newfound music every night, which keeps the rest of house awake. However, her music occasionally inspires Justin to creep into her room and listen along, albeit from a distance. Dr. Beck threatens to take the music away if Mila does not sleep or stay quiet at night. In response, Mila becomes defensive, remembering that Dr. Beck punished her by withholding the whale songs.
Mila stares out of her bedroom window at the river. Sandy asks her if looking at the river makes her sad. Mila is unsure how to answer this question, because although she still misses her dolphin family and the sea, she also loves her new human life “with so many things to do with hands and eyes and nose and mouth and ears” (57).
Dr. Beck asks Mila if she has any memories of life before the dolphins, but Mila does not. Dr. Beck reveals to Mila that experts believe she is the sole survivor a plane crash that killed her mother and brother. If so, Dr. Beck continues, then she was originally named Olivia. Dr. Beck also shows Mila a letter from Olivia’s father, who is Cuban, in which he expresses his joy that she survived and explains the obstacles preventing him from coming to meet her. Mila is under the custody of the US government, while he is currently powerless. This other family, which might be Mila’s, is one that she does not know or understand. Mila wants to remain with Dr. Beck, Sandy, and Shay.
Part 1, Chapter 16 Summary
Mila hears the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and finds its complexity and depth overwhelmingly beautiful. She asks if she can meet Mozart, and Dr. Beck explains that she cannot because Mozart died long ago. However, Dr. Beck continues, those who create something “very special” may see their legacy live on long after death. Dr. Beck tells Mila that their work together is similar to Mozart’s music in that it will leave a legacy in human society, unlike a sunset (which fades) or a wave (which washes away). When Mila wonders why waves’ or sunsets’ transience does not make them special, Dr. Beck is amazed at Mila’s depth of thought. She asks Mila if she would like to learn how to create music herself. In turn, Mila demonstrates that she can already sing along to the music of Peter Winter. Mila hopes to show her dolphin family her newfound musical abilities someday.
Part 1, Chapter 17 Summary
Dr. Beck believes that Mila is ready to learn something new, so she gives Mila a recorder. Mila blows into it, initially producing only squeaks. Dr. Beck assures her that she will learn how to produce more beautiful sounds with time. Regardless, Mila loves her new recorder, as it reminds her of “the inside of a shell” (66). In addition, she experiences an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the human hands that allow her to play it.
Part 1, Chapter 18 Summary
Mila awakens in the middle of the night. Staring out at the river, she feels completely alone. After singing a song expressing her loneliness, she breaks out of the house and dives into the river. In the hopes of finding her dolphin family, she swims much too far. When she finally realizes she needs to turn back, she realizes that the river’s current is too strong for her to swim against and nearly drowns.
Part 1, Chapter 19 Summary
Part 1, Chapter 20 Summary
Part 1, Chapter 21 Summary
Sandy takes Mila on a walk to the river. Mila hears music coming from a house nearby. She asks Sandy if they can visit that house, but Sandy explains that humans can only enter specific territories: If land belongs to someone else, then other people cannot trespass on it. Mila remembers that during her life with the dolphins, they went wherever they pleased, coming together, sharing the ocean, and then separating again in total freedom. She feels sorrow for humans, limited by their walls and locked doors.
Part 1, Chapter 22 Summary
Mila loves helping Shay and wants to help her learn to appreciate and understand music. She plays her recorder for Shay—a simple three-note pattern—at all volumes and angles. After a time, Shay gets up and starts hopping around, singing her own little song. Sandy and both doctors seem happy. Mila notes how much she loves music, describing it as something that makes her feel everything that all the other deep aspects of her life make her feel. With music, she feels love, joy, sadness, comfort, and every other emotion that comes along with life.
Part 1, Chapter 23 Summary
Mila continues practicing her recorder. She is eager to learn new notes and play more complex music, like that written by Mozart. Sandy shows Mila all the progress that she has made since they met, but Mila knows she has a lot left to learn.
Mila continues to worry for Shay, noticing the look of lost confusion in her eyes that Mila has so often experienced herself. She tries to make Shay laugh by imitating dolphin noises. Dr. Beck tries to discourage this, though, and tells Mila to help Shay learn English instead.
Justin gifts Mila an old radio, which allows her to discover an entire new world of music. It is not, however, the music of dolphins, nor does it allow her to listen to their oceanic laughter.
Part 1, Chapter 24 Summary
Mila learns more notes on her recorder. She also tries to play tag and catch with Shay, who does not seem to understand these games. Mila notes that the only time Shay uses her hands is for eating. Mila reflects on how much she loves her hands and everything that she can do with them, such as making music, using a computer to learn language, and playing games.
Part 1, Chapter 25 Summary
Sandy starts giving Mila books to read. Mila rapidly learns that books and water do not mix well. She starts to remember glimpses of her life before the dolphins and asks if Shay has such memories as well. Sandy answers that it is difficult to know what Shay remembers, because her mother kept Shay in a dark room all the time. Mila thinks of dolphin mothers and how they would never treat their babies this way. However, she knows that dolphins have flaws too and are not always good. She realizes that dolphins and humans are not unalike.
Part 1, Chapter 26 Summary
Dr. Beck reads Mila’s journals and decides it is time for Mila to publicly share her experiences of life at sea with the dolphin pod. Dr. Beck talks about this as though it will change the world, and Mila feels like Dr. Beck sees her as food to eat. Mila feels overwhelmed by the idea of sharing everything about dolphin life, as it is difficult to put into human words. Dr. Beck dismisses her concerns and notes how important Mila’s testimony would be, as well as what others could learn from her.
Part 1, Chapters 14-26 Analysis
This period of Mila’s life is defined by experiences of personal discovery. She comes to learn about her past, to find the power of music within herself, and to realize who she is as a person.
During her time with the dolphins, Mila never considered matters as complex as self-identity because she never needed to: Her life with them was simple yet demanding, and they understood and loved her exactly as she was. She experienced Family and Connection as part of a large community of dolphin kin whose way of life rendered the idea of personal identity irrelevant. In contrast, personal identity holds a central place in human society. The humans who found Mila gave her a name derived from the Spanish word for “miracles” because they could not conceive of separating her personal identity from the perceived “miracle” of her survival. Yet Mila herself has never thought of her survival as anything special, much less needed to make it a central component of her identity.
For Mila, the true miracle is her introduction to the power of music. The sounds and stories of music enamor her. She loves to play it, hear it, sing it, and create it. Mila has an instinctive understanding of music and its purposes, and she can hear the stories that Mozart tells in his pieces. When she receives a recorder, she quickly learns to play it in much the same fashion that she learned to speak and write. She begins with three notes, then five, and soon is playing complex songs that she composes herself. The recorder’s smoothness and color remind her of a seashell, and so she uses it to compose stories about her life in the sea. The recorder thus becomes a point of connection between Mila and her old life. As Mila discovers the power of music to express her thoughts, she also develops a deeper understanding of human society. Specifically, she starts to think conceptually and abstractly about her place in the world and about the problems faced by humans—including loneliness, anger, and fear—as well as their need to hold on to the past or create a legacy. The sophistication of Mila’s musical abilities translates into increased linguistic and philosophical abilities. She begins to make observations like, “Each sunset, each wave is something to see once and never again. Is that not special too?” (61). Mila likewise employs simile to compare her experiences with her emotions. She states, for instance, “When I am not playing [music], I feel a tightness inside me, like when the sea grass catches my feet and I cannot break free” (78). Hesse too creates an implicit simile between musical sound waves, which free Mila of painful emotions, and ocean waves, which can unravel errant sea grass in time.
The power of music also serves to deepen Mila’s connection with Shay, of whom she feels protective and whom she very much wishes to help. When Mila plays her recorder, Shay jumps around and belts out noises. While Shay’s “songs” are off-tune and awkward, they are a welcome departure from the mentally shut down and emotionally withdrawn state in which Shay usually exists. Mila senses the pure joy behind Shay’s singing and hence loves the sounds she makes. By responding in this way, Mila shows that the nonjudgmental and joyful nature she developed while living with her dolphin family is still intact. Moreover, because music is a conduit for this experience of profound acceptance and delight, it allows Shay to make a similarly healing connection with these creatures.
Despite such moments of musical and relational fulfillment, Mila’s frustrations with the restrictions of human life mount until she breaks out of the house and dives into the Charles River. Mila’s decision to swim in an icy river alone at night is indicative of her sheer desperation. Just as an animal might brave danger and possible death to search for its lost offspring, Mila risks her life in the hopes of reestablishing connection with her dolphin family.
Tragically, this attempt at regaining personal freedom only results in her being placed under further restrictions, and she spends weeks locked in her room. Mila subsequently compares the limited lives of human beings—forced to abide by artificial rules and respect unnatural barriers—with the carefree lives of dolphins and realizes that humanity lives in a constant prison. The more that Mila learns What It Means to Be Human, the more she wants to return to the sea.
Related Titles
By Karen Hesse
