Kon-Tiki (Masterplots II: Juvenile and Young Adult Biography Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Thor Heyerdahl
- First Published: 1950
- Time of Work: 1947
- Setting: Ecuador, Peru, and Polynesia
- Principal Characters: Thor Heyerdahl, Bengt Emmerik Danielsson, Erik Hesselberg, Herman Watzinger, Knut Haugland, Torstein Raaby, Gerd Vold, Don José Bustamante y Rivero, Tepiuraiarii Teriifaatau, Frederic Ahnne
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography
- Subjects: Voyages, Autobiography, Native Americans or American Indians, Islands, Sailing or sailors, Adventure, South America or South Americans, Peru or Peruvians, Pacific Ocean, Norway or Norwegians, Navigation
- Locales: Peru, Ecuador, Polynesia
Form and Content
The name “Kon-Tiki” commemorates a legendary chief to whom Polynesians accorded the status of an ancestral deity that originally brought them to the islands. The word symbolizes the theory and the adventure behind crossing the Pacific Ocean on a balsa raft, and it is the name given to the raft constructed by Thor Heyerdahl and his five selected companions. Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft is less an autobiography, though filled with personal experiences, than the story of a raft alone upon the vast Pacific, from when it left the...
[The entire page is 1383 words long]
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