Wild Wings

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 10

Chapters 11-20

Chapters 21-32

Chapters 33-44

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Love and Loss

While the novel is strongly focused on the fate of a single osprey, it also foregrounds the emotional bonds among humans and how those bonds are repeatedly tested by the threat of loss. The text first introduces Callum when he pivots away from his best friends, Euan and Rob, and chooses to follow Iona instead. This immediately creates a rift in the boys’ bond. Iona is a newcomer to the town, and Rob fears losing his friendship with Callum. To counter that threat, he immediately implies that Iona and her grandfather as “nutters.” These exchanges establish a sense that relationships are precarious and require work to prevent loss.

Callum feels guilty because he knows that Iona is in an emotionally vulnerable state. She has recently been sent away from her mother, leaving her heartbroken. She even tells Callum, “[s]he’s never coming back for me” (109-110). With an absent mother and a neglectful grandfather, Iona feels that her relationship with Callum and Iris offers the only emotional stability in her life. On her deathbed, she fuses both those sources of love into one by making Callum promise to look after Iris.

Callum now finds himself in the excruciating position of trying to protect a bird that he loves from thousands of miles away. In his mind, he has also fused Iona and Iris into one. They represent his most important emotional attachment. Callum has lost Iona, but he is determined not to lose Iris. His sense of survivor’s guilt prompts his father to point out, “[i]t’s not your fault Iona died” (179). Callum is unwilling to accept this and intends to honor his promise to Iona. This suggests that loss motivates people to channel their love into something else.

Love and loss are amplified when yet another little girl in need of help enters his life. After corresponding with Jeneba and realizing her serious medical problems, Callum is determined to help her in a way that he could never help Iona. With the aid of his entire community, Callum raises money to get Jeneba the medical care that she needs. A promise that began with Iona is fulfilled when Jeneba comes to Scotland and Iris returns. Callum feels Iona’s spirit and realizes that love survives loss, even from beyond the grave.

Expanding the Community

As the story opens, three village boys confront an outsider. Iona is viewed as someone who doesn’t belong, and Rob literally accuses her of trespassing on Callum’s property. The battle lines in the village are clearly drawn between the community and those who ought to be excluded. Mr. McNair and his granddaughter are seen as eccentric outsiders, and Iona is ostracized at school just as her grandfather is avoided by the adults in town.

Iona creates some distinctions of her own when she swears Callum to secrecy about the osprey nest. They become insiders while everyone else is excluded. Circumstances force them to widen the circle of insiders after Iris becomes tangled in a fishing line. Now, the McGregor family and Hamish are in on the secret. Iona’s death triggers another change in the closed ranks of the community. Initially, the neighbors gossip about Mr. McNair, but Callum’s mother rebukes them for it: “What did we do to keep an eye out for her little girl? Did Mr. McNair feel he could call on any of us?’ (135). This highlights the high stakes of including people in a wider community. Suddenly, the notion of community has expanded to include even the eccentric Mr. McNair.

Callum also finds his own secret circle expanding when Euan and Rob spy the male osprey fishing in the loch. Eventually, the entire village learns the story but keeps it secret from the outside world since poachers who steal osprey eggs would love to learn the exact location of Iris’s nest. Because Iris carries a satellite transmitter, she now connects a small group of people in Scotland to another continent. Modern technology enables Callum to reach out to people in The Gambia via email when Iris goes missing. They reciprocate by finding the missing bird through the mediation of Jeneba.

The exclusionary nature of Callum’s osprey secret is no longer possible when the community expands to include the entire world. This global reach has a definite upside in publicizing Jeneba’s health crisis and generating financial support for her surgeries. At this point, the notion of exclusion loses all necessity. Iris’s migration path connects two continents that seem worlds apart but are united in their shared concern for a single osprey.

Mystical Connections Between Humans and Animals

While the novel devotes a good deal of attention to electronic gadgetry in keeping Iris connected to her human friends, it also portrays connections of another kind. Iona is the first to recognize that all the data and facts about Iris are meaningless without feeling. Mystical connections are just as important as physical ones. Iona can predict the exact day when Iris will arrive because she knows how to feel like a bird: “She stood up and stretched her arms wide like outspread wings. ‘I just know. I can feel it. You have to imagine you’re a bird, to feel it’” (38). This mystical empathy Iona feels for animals conveys that humans must acknowledge their connection to animals to help to preserve them, rather than feel superior to animals.

After Iona dies, the grief-stricken Callum accuses Iris of being nothing but a dumb bird. However, she lands next to the treehouse as if to comfort him, and they look at each other and feel connected. Iris herself says, “the boy remained in her memory, the boy who held her and eased her pain” (101). Both Iris and Callum ease each other’s pain, physically and emotionally. This highlights the benefits of connections between humans and animals.

Much later, when Iris goes missing in The Gambia, a local village wise man, a marabout, conducts a ritual to locate the bird. “The marabout spread his arms wide like wings, and called to the bird spirit. The smoke from his fire drifted out from the hut like a great, white bird and flew out over the forest” (189). Lewis creates spiritual imagery instead of physical imagery; he calls to the “spirit,” not the bird itself, and the smoke is a simile for the bird instead of being the bird. The marabout’s mystical connection to Iris allows him to lead a rescue party to the spot where she is hiding even though his physical eyes no longer function.

After Callum learns about this, he speculates about the nature of the connections that exist between people and the rest of creation. His parents are wary of trusting pagan beliefs, but Callum quickly notes the symbolism of the Holy Spirit of Christianity and the eagle decorating the local minister’s pulpit. In the novel’s final pages, Callum compares the steam rising form his cup of hot chocolate to the mystical smoke of the marabout’s fire. The parallel isn’t lost on Jeneba. She tells Callum, “[m]aybe you are like the marabout. Maybe the bird spirit, she flies to you too” (273). In the digital age, the text suggests that mystical connections still have their place.