The Music Of Dolphins

The mood of the Preface is one of total, simplistic joy. Mila’s dolphin family protects her and views her as one of their own. Her experiences with her dolphin pod have defined her life thus far. Indeed, it is only through these experiences that she has any concepts of Family and Connection. Mila is completely unhindered: She enjoys The Freedom to Be True to the Self while never having to experience loneliness. She feels a sense of connection with these dolphins and has never felt like she was missing anything or in need of more than she had.

This life of freedom and family is suddenly taken from her in what initially seems like a well-intended rescue effort but later turns out to have been a deliberate attempt to capture her for the purposes of live human research. This “rescue” is narrated by a text that employs the visual formatting and tone of a standard newspaper article. Mila is thus sensationalized as an “invaluable resource for studying the role of language and socialization play in the making of a human being” (5), as opposed to a human being with a unique story to tell. Indeed, the article all but explicitly states that Mila is more animal or object than person. To this end, Dr. Beck claims to have developed techniques to “stimulate a ‘human’ response in these children” (5).

Once at the research facility, Mila feels a deep conflict between wanting to please the doctors and Sandy and wanting to return to her ocean home. At first, Mila mistakenly assumes that if she does what they ask, they will eventually let her go. For this reason, Mila gradually learns human language and begins to adopt standard human thought patterns. Karen Hesse illustrates this transition by beginning her story with large-print journal entries, which discuss extremely basic recollections like, “Dr. Beck says, Good. Good, Mila. I like good” (8). However, as Mila learns to use human language and her thoughts become increasingly complex, her entries’ sentences become longer and their print smaller.

Ironically, the more that Mila learns about human living, the more her world shrinks. When the researchers provide her with objects designed to remind her of home, she feels an empty sense of longing. Dr. Beck also slowly conditions Mila to believe that she is human by asking her questions like, “Tell me, what are you? A girl or a dolphin?” (12). This conditioning is only partially successful, which plunges Mila into a prolonged identity crisis characterized by emotional turbulence and confusion. She wishes for “the good sea”: the real ocean, with its salt, its sounds, and her dolphin family. Instead, she receives books, recordings, and other shallow reminders of and replacements for her former life. As Mila’s understanding of her situation grows, so does her empathy toward Shay, in whom she sees all the same feelings of imprisonment and frustration that she herself is quickly developing.