The Refugee Experience
Little Bee tells the intertwined stories of a Nigerian undocumented refugee in England named Little Bee, and an upper-class magazine editor living in London named Sarah, who form an unlikely bond with each other as Sarah copes with her husband Andrew’s suicide. As a refugee, Little Bee seeks asylum in England after she sees her family murdered and witnesses the genocidal atrocities of an oil war in Nigeria. Despite Little Bee’s desperate…
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Cross-Cultural Relationships
Little Bee and Sarah represent two different worlds: war-torn Nigeria and sophisticated London. Although they seem unlikely companions, both make a sincere effort to understand each other’s life and culture, and thus model both the struggles and benefits of cross-cultural relationships. Although there is much that separates them, Sarah and Little Bee’ relationship suggests that people from different worlds can learn from each other, and their shared human experience ultimately unites them.
Little Bee and…
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Horror and Trauma
As a Nigerian oil war refugee and genocide survivor, Little Bee witnesses numerous horrific events in her brief lifetime that shock both Sarah and the reader, though nonetheless reflect the bleak reality of many parts of the world. Through Little Bee’s narration, the novel suggests that the developing world suffers many horrors that the developed world conveniently turns a blind eye to, and that those horrors can lead to life-altering trauma.
The horrors that Little…
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Moral Compromise and Self-Interest
After Andrew and Sarah have a traumatic meeting with Little Bee and Nkiruka in Nigeria, both Andrew and Sarah begin to question the manner in which modern society has led them to prioritize comfort over compassion, which ultimately leads them down very different paths; Andrew drowns in his guilt and eventually commits suicide because of it while Sarah reorients her life toward helping others. Andrew and Sarah’s struggles with their own moral compromises suggests modern…
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Identity and Fear
Little Bee, Sarah, and four-year-old Charlie are all hiding from pain and trauma—Little Bee from traumatic memories and fear of returning to Nigeria, Sarah from guilt over Andrew’s suicide which she feels she did not try hard enough to prevent, and Charlie from the loss of his father, which he cannot entirely understand. To cope with their burdens, each character adopts a constructed identity for themselves which helps them to hide from…
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