Study Guide to Kon-Tiki and Aku-Aku by Thor Heyerdahl

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781645425052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Thor Heyerdahl, whose career as a zoologist was influenced by the interests of his parents. Titles in this study guide include Kon Tiki and Aku Aku.As an author of twentieth-century travel literature, Heyerdahl had a profound fascination with outdoor life and traveling. His devotion and pursuit of knowledge won him countless medals, memberships, and other honors. Moreover, his stories contained descriptions of places like Easter Island and the Marquesas Islands. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Heyerdahl's classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&AsThe Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO THOR HEYERDAHL

Thor Heyerdahl was born in Larvik, Norway, on October 6, 1914. His father was the president of a brewery and mineral water plant; his mother was Alison (nee Lyng) Heyerdahl, the chairlady of the Larvik Museum. Heyerdahl’s choice of a career was influenced by the interests of his parents: his father loved outdoor life - hiking, hunting, and fishing - and his mother loved zoology, folk art, and the study of primitive races. The young boy decided to become a zoologist; he studied at the Middelskole of Larvik, graduating when he was sixteen. Three years later he graduated from the Larvik Gymnasium and enrolled at Oslo University. At the University, he studied mathematics, philosophy, genetics, zoology, and geography. In addition, he specialized in the study of Polynesian ethnology. During his school vacations, Heyerdahl sought a change from his academic pursuits by fishing in mountain lakes and streams, camping out in the mountain forests, and hiking over snow-covered trails in dog-sleds pulled by teams of barking huskies. His desire to write about his experiences found expression in the articles he began to publish in Norwegian newspapers and magazines.

In December, 1936, Heyerdahl decided to leave his studies at the University to embark on a zoological-ethnological expedition to the Marquesas Islands in French Oceania in the South Pacific. Both he and his wife, Liv Heyerdahl, whom he had married on Christmas Eve of 1936, had shared the hope of “getting back to nature” by traveling to a primitive region far from the stresses and strains of modern life. The Museum of the University of Oslo had agreed to cooperate with Heyerdahl in the planning of the expedition, although he paid for the expenses of the trip himself, inasmuch as he would be able to use the trip as the practical field experience needed for him to obtain his advanced degree at the university.

After a successful voyage, Heyerdahl and his wife landed at Fatu-Hiva, the exotic Marquesan island which was to become their home for the next two years. Living as the natives did, on simple fruits, fish, and coconuts, the Heyerdahls had found the tranquility which they had sought. But they were also very busy. Heyerdahl explored native trails, navigated the sinuous rivers and streams, and made a remarkable discovery: the ruins of ancient temples with carvings in red stone of grotesque figures chiseled centuries ago. His findings were to change Heyerdahl’s primary interest from zoology to ethnology, and were the basis for his later research and travel, particularly for his Kon-Tiki voyage and the later exploration of Easter Island, recounted in Aku-Aku. Heyerdahl compiled a Norwegian - Polynesian dictionary through his study of the natives’ language on Fatu-Hiva, and published an article on his experiences of 1937-38 in the January, 1941, issue of the National Geographic Magazine.

Why was Heyerdahl fascinated with the early art of the Marquesan Islands? Primarily, because he thought these relics bore a marked resemblance to artistic works of early tribes of South America. Many of the legends he had heard from the natives of Fatu-Hiva were similar to those tales of South America native to the Indian tribes who lived before the Incas. Was there any connection between the two cultures? If so, how could one tribe have possibly influenced the other, unless it were possible for the natives of centuries ago to have crossed the Pacific Ocean? This question was the one that Heyerdahl would, someday perhaps, try to answer.

Heyerdahl returned to Norway in 1938, and published Paa Jakt efter Paradiset (On the Hunt for Paradise). He spent the next year in library research in Oslo, and then did research among the coastal Indians in Bella Paula, British Columbia (1939-1940). He spent 1940-1942 working at various jobs in Canada and the United States. During World War II, he served in the Norwegian armed forces as a lieutenant, first in a parachute unit and later in an invasion unit which operated in Arctic Norway until the end of the war.

After the war, Heyerdahl returned to his studies of Polynesian culture. His chief theory was that the prehistoric settlement of the South Seas Islands was made by ancient pre-Inca Indians from Peru, who had worshipped the sun god “Kon.” The leader of this race, he believed, was Kon-Tiki, “the earthly representative of Kon,” who fled about A.D. 500 with some of his followers across the Pacific after a war with Indians from the Andes mountains. Heyerdahl was determined to prove that the pre-historic Peruvians could have sailed across the ocean on their balsa-wood rafts by means of strong ocean currents. With five of his companions, he set sail on a wooden craft, the Kon-Tiki, from Callao, Peru, on April 28, 1947. His five companions were Herman Watzinger, Knut Haugland, Bengt Danielsson, Erik Hesselberg, and Torstein Raaby. Their “other” purposes were to collect oceanographic data and to “test life-saving and communications equipment developed by the United States and British armed forces during and since the war.”

After a trip of one hundred and one days, the raft reached the Tuamotu Archipelago, where it was wrecked on the Raroia Reef. But the voyage had been a success. President Truman of the United States and King Haakon of Norway, among others, saluted Heyerdahl and his companions for their historic voyage. A best-selling book, Kon-Tiki, and a prize-winning documentary film of the trip made Heyerdahl famous throughout the world.

Heyerdahl did not take his wife on the Kon-Tiki voyage, explaining: “My wife wanted to go along on this trip, because she’s just as sure I’m right about this idea, and just as adventure-minded as I am, but we decided that one of us had better stay at home and look after our adventurous kids.” His family, including a son and daughter, did accompany him, however, on a later voyage to Easter Islands. A large modern ship provided the kind of living accommodations less readily available on a wooden raft. In his later book, Aku-Aku, Heyerdahl tells how his curiosity about Easter Island first became whetted: “As the Kon-Tiki drifted with the current far to the north, we had sat on deck in the moonlight and talked about the mystery of Easter Island. At that time I had secretly dreamed of coming back some-day to the eastern Pacific and going ashore to the lovely island.” Excavations made at Easter Island have produced numerous artifacts of a civilization which may have flourished before the birth of Christ. The book is a recounting of the adventures Heyerdahl and his group encountered, and ends with his speculation on the origins and past history of the island. (See...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1) Introduction To Thor Heyerdahl
• 2) Kon-Tiki Textual Analysis
• 3) Aku-Aku Textual Analysis
• 4) Critical Commentary
• 5) Essay Questions And Answers
• 6) Bibliography