Raven Inside the Whale

Raven is hungry.

This is not unusual. Raven is always hungry — hunger is his primary motivation, his central characteristic, the engine of most of his accomplishments. He is flying over the ocean looking for something to eat and he sees the whale below him, enormous and slow, and he has an idea.

The idea is, in retrospect, a bad one.

He dives toward the whale’s open mouth, which the whale holds open sometimes at the surface to take in schools of small fish. He dives into the mouth and the mouth closes and he is inside the whale.

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It is dark inside. But not completely dark.

There is a lamp burning. Raven looks at the lamp for a long time, because a lamp burning inside a whale is unexpected, and unexpected things interest him even when they shouldn’t. The lamp is lit with whale fat — there is a supply of fat here, and a small lamp, and the lamp has been burning for a very long time.

Raven realizes he is inside the whale’s body. The walls around him are warm and moving, and the sound is the sound of water and heartbeat, and it is, in its way, comfortable. He is not immediately in danger.

He begins to eat the fat.

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He eats methodically, carefully, because he is trying to eat enough to keep himself alive while also not eating so much so fast that the whale dies before he has a plan for getting out. He keeps the lamp burning because without the lamp he cannot see, and he cannot see because he has nothing to see by except the lamp. He is, in his way, solving a logistical problem.

For a long time this works.

The whale weakens. It swims more slowly. It surfaces more often. The people on shore notice a sick whale circling nearer and nearer. Eventually the whale beaches itself on the sand, and the people come to butcher it — as people have always done when a whale beaches, because a beached whale is an enormous gift of food.

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They are cutting into it when something cuts back from the inside.

Raven pushes out through the cut the people have made, squeezing through into the cold air and the light. He is covered in whale fat and very pleased with himself. The people are extremely startled. Some versions of the story say he comes out carrying the lamp.

He shakes himself off on the beach and eats some more whale fat, because he is still hungry, because he is Raven and he is always hungry.

The inside of the whale was warm and lit and full of food. He was not afraid in there. He was not repentant. He did not pray to be released. He ate his way to the beach and stepped out when the door was opened.

This is the difference between Raven in the whale and Jonah in the whale.

Jonah asks God to let him out.

Raven eats his way out and then eats some more.