Mila (The Music of the Dolphins)

Mila is the protagonist and narrator of "The Music of the Dolphins," a 1996 book by Karen Hesse. The story of her time in human society is retold through her journal entries, which are written on a computer provided to her by scientists researching children in feral states. Mila’s journal entries become increasingly complex and abstract as she gains facility with human language and finds the power of music awakening her deeper self. Before she ever came to know human music, Mila spent every second of her life immersed in the “living music” of the sea, which she describes as “the whisper of fish, the roar of wind, the chatter of stones and sand, of weeds and reefs in the wave-churned surf” (96). Despite the traumas she endures after being captured by other humans, nothing can take the sea out of Mila: Using her recorder, she recreates the sounds and stories of her ocean home. Mila is constantly torn between her desire to return to the sea and her knowledge that she is biologically human. Despite the sense of Family and Connection she feels with Justin, Sandy, and Shay, her heart belongs to her dolphin pod and the ocean they shared.