“glittering kingdom”
Paragraph 1, line 6 (page 6)
A metaphor that turns a cold fjord into a royal realm. “Glittering” suggests jewels and light, and “kingdom” implies a place with its own order and rulers, which may be the narwhal and the hunters rather than the watching visitor. It sets a tone of wonder, so the later arguments about survival are heard by a reader who already values the place. It shares a sentence with her “sharp intake of breath”: the landscape literally takes her breath away.
“butter-gold, glinting off man and whale”
Paragraph 1, line 8 (page 6)
The compound adjective “butter-gold” is warm, soft and homely, an unexpected image in the Arctic, and it makes the evening light feel rich and comforting. The light falls equally on “man and whale”: before any conflict begins, Herbert places hunter and hunted in the same frame and the same glow. That even-handedness foreshadows lines 45 to 51, where she cannot wish success for one without wishing failure for the other.
“mischievous tricks of the shifting light”
Paragraph 1, line 12 (page 6)
Personification: the shifting light seems to play tricks, and Herbert calls them “mischievous”, as if the light were a playful trickster. She wonders whether the narwhal exist at all. The effect is dreamlike and slightly unsettling. It may also plant an idea that matters later: in the Arctic, appearances deceive, and people who judge from a distance, as the critics in the last paragraph do, may not see what is really there. The first paragraph ends on uncertainty rather than on action.
“essential contributor to the survival”
Paragraph 3, line 17 (page 6)
The report-like register that began at line 13 is at its most formal here. After the lyrical opening, Herbert writes like a textbook: abstract, formal vocabulary, then minerals, vitamins and scurvy. The shift is deliberate. Having made the reader feel the beauty, she now makes them understand the need, and the Latin-derived, almost scientific wording gives her claims authority. The noun “survival” anticipates her final paragraph: this is not sport but life.
“spread like a net”
Paragraph 4, line 40 (page 7)
A simile that presents the hunters as one co-ordinated body closing around the whales. A net is patient and collective; no single strand catches anything alone. Coming in the same sentence as her comparison of the scene to a vast game played on water, it raises the tension and hints at how little escape the narwhal have. It also quietly corrects any idea of the hunt as a reckless free-for-all: this is organised, skilled work.
“my heart leapt for both hunter and narwhal”
Paragraph 6, lines 46 to 47 (page 7)
The turning point of the extract. The metaphor of the leaping heart shows an instinctive reaction, faster than thought, arriving at the very instant the hunter aims. The key word is “both”: Herbert refuses to choose, and placing “hunter” and “narwhal” side by side gives them equal weight. Many answers call this sympathy for the whale; it is more accurate to call it sympathy for two lives at risk, since the hunter could drown.
“foolhardy exercise and one that could only inspire respect”
Paragraph 6, line 50 (page 7)
A balanced sentence that holds two judgements at once. “Foolhardy” means recklessly bold, a criticism; “inspire respect” is admiration. Herbert does not cancel one with the other: the danger is exactly why the courage deserves respect. The word “only” leaves no room for disagreement. Use this quotation to show that her attitude to the hunters is complex rather than simply approving.
“to dive, to leave, to survive”
Paragraph 6, line 51 (page 7)
A tricolon of infinitives that builds to the verb that matters most, “survive”. The rhythm quickens like a heartbeat, and the list reads as a silent plea. It follows the pivot “And yet” in line 50, so the sentence performs the reversal it describes, swinging her loyalty from the man to the whale. The final verb names the same need she will defend for the hunters in the next paragraph.
“one cannot afford to be sentimental”
Paragraph 7, line 55 (page 7)
The impersonal pronoun “one” turns a private feeling into a general rule, and the verb “afford” presents sentiment as a luxury the Arctic cannot pay for. It is a sharp change from the emotional paragraph before it, as if she were correcting herself. One reading is that she is rejecting her own reaction; a better one is that she is saying feeling cannot decide how people live in a place this harsh, while admitting she still feels it.
“How can you possibly eat seal?”
Paragraph 7, lines 55 to 56 (page 7)
A question other people have put to Herbert many times, rhetorical in spirit because it expresses disbelief rather than asking for information. The adverb “possibly” carries the questioner's incredulity. By voicing the objection herself, in its strongest form, she shows she understands it, and then earns the right to answer it. The answer follows at once: a concession about the images of seals being beaten for their fur, then the facts about how the Inughuit hunt.
“Hunting is still an absolute necessity in Thule”
Paragraph 7, lines 63 to 64 (page 7), the last sentence
A short declarative sentence that ends the extract on a flat statement of fact. The adjective “absolute” allows no exception, and “still” answers readers who assume modern supplies have made hunting unnecessary, an assumption her details of one supply ship and a twice-weekly plane have just been used to challenge. Ending on the place name reminds the reader that the argument concerns one community, not hunting everywhere. It closes the argument, though arguably not the dilemma.