The whale in Castaway!

[Goodsoulette]

I was chatting to someone about Castaway (the Tom Hanks film) and I said the whale was in it about 3 times but she said it was just the once. I think the whale sprayed him when the ship was passing to save him but she thinks this is ridiculous and that you just saw the whale once and it meant nothing.

Am I going nuts? AS I think the whale might have alerted him to his ball diappearing off into the ocean too.

Yup, Im sounding nuts.

[lindapinda]

I love Castaway Goodsoul:-) I agree the whale saved him by spraying,but,don't remember it alerting him to "Wilson" sailing off..could be wrong tho?

[Goodsoulette]

Even partly agreeing with me makes me feel not so nuts but I remember the first time I watched it I thought, wow, the whale stayed with all that way, he must have been looking out for him.

[tputnam3]

8 years later, I have some thoughts on this. I show this movie to my middle school students and have seen it many, many times. We always watch it with the captions on. While we only SEE the actual whale that first night, it comes back at two crucial times and spouts water on Chuck, apparently to wake him up. All you see on the screen is Chuck getting soaked with water from above (twice each time it happens) but the caption reads something like "Whale spouts water." So the whale is there three different times, but seen only once. The other times are: 1) right after Wilson falls off his perch into the ocean (Chuck is sleeping and doesn't notice, then the whale spouts water on him twice and he wakes up to discover Wilson in the ocean), and 2) as Chuck is sleeping while the cargo ship is passing behind him (again, the spouting wakes him up and he finally turns around and sees the ship). I've been trying to puzzle out the meaning of these "wake-up calls," as they definitely are not random, but, rather, happen at the two most crucial points of Chuck's raft voyage. Is the whale a guardian angel of some sort? A symbol of Nature trying to help out a guy who's had a pretty rough four years living alone in the Natural World? Something Biblical? I'd love to hear an answer...