“Maybe I thought I’d discover whatever cruel thing drove me to leave people and places and everything, always. Or maybe I was just hoping the bird’s final migration would show me a place to belong.”

This offers a glimpse into one of the reasons behind Franny’s constant migration. Though compelled to wander from place to place, she, like all animals, craves the security of a unified community. These two seemingly conflicting impulses drive the novel’s plot.

“I’m frightened of how simple it was to dive into the water instead of calling for help. My drowning instinct.”

Franny’s “drowning instinct” is the shame she feels about herself, which leads her to treat her life as disposable. While harmful, her disregard for her own safety allows her to save the lives of several other people.

“‘Skipper’s got his heart set on finding the Golden Catch,’ Samuel tells me with a wink.

‘What’s that?’

‘The white whale,’ Samuel says.”

Migration has parallels to the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In Moby Dick, sea captain Ahab is driven to self-destruction and madness by his singular, stubborn desire to kill the white whale. Like Ahab, Ennis is motivated by an obsessive desire to dominate over nature. The phrase “white whale” implies that Ennis’s obsession will be his undoing.