Robie’s piercing and henna tattoo, both of which she gets during her stay in Honolulu, at the start of the book, are symbols of her interest in experimenting with independence. They represent her efforts to try on the trappings of adulthood. While they seem, to Robie, to be significant statements of her nearly-adult identity at the time that she gets them, the nose ring and the henna tattoo later become symbols of her naiveté, rather than her maturity. When she is out on the ocean, truly on her own, and forced into fending entirely for herself, the notion that she was fending for herself by choosing a piercing seems laughable.

The journal andSkittles are more than a juicy detail about Robie’s life on the raft. They embody her last link to civilization and to her civilized self. They also allow Bodeen to establish a lingering sense of the rules of society which apply on land, but which begin to disintegrate on the raft. Robie knows that within the framework of life on land (that is, life in society) the journal and the Skittles belong to Max, and as such, she should respect the division between his possessions and her possessions.