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 their pain. However, it also prevents them from simply being themselves and thus being vulnerable enough to love each other without holding back. Through Little Bee, Sarah, and Charlie, Little Bee explores the way in which an individual develops their sense of identity to protect or hide themselves, but ultimately suggests that to truly and selflessly love someone, one must give up their self-protecting identity and be vulnerable.
Little Bee, Sarah, and Charlie all construct identities—or “costumes”—to protect themselves from the world and help them hide from pain. In the immigration detention center, Little Bee (which is itself pseudonym adopted while fleeing for her life) constructs an identity for herself as a sexless person so that she will be ignored by predatory men, flattening her breasts with a cotton wrap and wearing loosely fitting clothing to hide her female shape. To mitigate the racial prejudice of other people, Little Bee teaches herself to speak English like the Queen, adopting an aristocratic British accent. She makes herself “neither a woman nor a girl, a creature who had forgotten her language and learned yours, whose past had crumbled to dust” and holds onto this identity even while living with Sarah, since it helps her to cope with her fear of being deported and hide from traumatic memories.
Even before Andrew’s suicide, Sarah feels guilty for their failing marriage and her ongoing affair and is haunted by her first meeting with Little Bee in Nigeria. To cope with her guilt and painful memories of a violent world, Sarah leans into her role as a successful career woman, working mother, and wife, though her heavy reliance on fashionable marriage and parenting advice columns suggests she is more concerned with fitting the identity than actually enjoying the act of being a wife or a mother. By focusing all of her energy on constructing her identity, Sarah avoids grappling with the pain of her failing marriage or memories of Nigeria.
Charlie hides from the pain and confusion of losing his father by spending the summer with Little Bee dressed in a Batman costume. As Batman, Charlie feels empowered to understand the world—which he breaks down simply into “goodies” and “baddies”—and this offers him a reprieve from the confusion of Andrew’s suicide. Charlie’s Batman costume symbolically represents his, Little Bee’s, and Sarah’s constructed identities and the manner in which it hides them from the world and shields them from their own pain. Reflecting on each of their identities, Sarah reflects, “We were exiles from reality, that summer. We were refugees from ourselves,” suggesting that just as Charlie’s belief that he is Batman helps him but is a denial of reality, so too are her and Little Bee’s fabricated identities a denial of reality.
After the British government deports Little Bee back to Nigeria, Little Bee, Sarah, and Charlie each learn to let go of their constructed identities so that they can love each other honestly and selflessly. When Little Bee is arrested and deported, Sarah gives up her identity as a professional woman to follow Little Bee back to Nigeria and attempt to save her, telling Charlie, “We won’t ever give up on Little Bee. Because she is part of our family now.” More than simply following Little Bee to Nigeria, Sarah stays close to Little Bee at all times, reasoning that the soldiers who want to kill Little Bee wouldn’t dare to do so with a British journalist present. In shedding her identity as an upper-class career woman, Sarah reclaims her former idealism, the version of herself that cut off her middle finger to save Little Bee once before, which allows her to love Little Bee without regard for her own safety or well-being and live more boldly as who she is.
Similarly, when Little Bee realizes sees the Nigerian soldiers shoot at Charlie, she realizes the only way to stop them is to reveal her true self as Udo the village girl—and give up her identity as Little Bee—whom they are hunting, so they will leave Charlie alone. Although the novel implies that Udo will quickly be arrested and probably killed, by sacrificing her identity as Little Bee, she not only saves Charlie’s life, but also models the courage it takes to live truly as oneself, despite how fearful or vulnerable it may seem. Emboldened by Little Bee’s courage to become Udo once again, Charlie takes off his Batman costume, shedding his own identity, and joyfully plays with the other children on the beach, existing simply and purely as Charlie, who may not understand his father’s suicide but now can move and play and participate freely in society without hiding. Sarah, Little Bee, and Charlie each face risk in letting go of their fabricated identities, and yet within that vulnerability they are able to live freely and love selflessly, which ultimately suggests that although a developed identity may help one protect themselves from the world or hide from pain, it ultimately impedes their ability to fully live and love others.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Identity and Fear ThemeTracker
Identity and Fear Quotes in Little Bee
How I would love to be a British pound. A pound is free to travel to safety, and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalization.
Once a week, I sat on the foam mattress of my bed and I painted my toenails. I found the little bottle of varnish at the bottom of a charity box. It still had the price ticket on it. If I ever discover the person who gave it then I will tell them, for the cost of one British pound and ninety-nine pence, they saved my life. Because this is what I did in that place, to remind myself I was alive underneath everything: under my steel toe caps I wore bright red nail varnish.
I felt that if I took one step forward, the earth itself would rise up and reject me. There was nothing natural about me now. I stood there in my heavy boots with my breasts strapped down, neither a woman nor a girl, a creature who had forgotten her language and learned yours, whose past had crumbled to dust.
That summer—the summer my husband died—we all had identities we were loath to let go of. My son had his Batman costume, I still used my husband’s surname, and Little Bee, though she was relatively safe with us, still clung to the name she had taken in a time of terror. We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refuges from ourselves.
He wouldn’t give up, but if I am strict and force myself now to decide upon the precise moment in this whole story when my heart irreparably broke, it was the moment when I saw the weariness and the doubt creep into my son’s small muscles as his fingers slipped, for the tenth time, from the pale oak lid.
They told us we must be disciplined to overcome our fears. This is the discipline I learned: whenever I go into a new place, I work out how I would kill myself there. In case the men come suddenly, I make sure I am ready.
How calm my eyes were, since that day on the beach in Africa. When there has been a loss so fundamental I suppose that to lose just one more thing—a finger, perhaps, or a husband—is of absolutely no consequence at all.
So, I realized—life had finally broken through. How silly it looked now, my careful set of defenses against nature: my brazen magazine, my handsome husband, my Maginot line of motherhood and affairs. The world, the real world, had found a way through. It had sat down on my sofa and it would not be denied any longer.
Then I listened to my sister’s bones being broken one by one. That is how my sister died. […] When the men and the dogs were finished with my sister, the only parts of her that they threw into the sea were the parts that could not be eaten.
“I’ve spent two years denying what happened on that beach. Ignoring it, letting it fester. That’s what Andrew did too, and it killed him in the end. I’m not going to let it kill me and Charlie.”
I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the fluorescent lights, the buzzing of the fax machines, and the fluid chatter of the editorial girls on their phones to fashion houses. It all seemed suddenly insane, like wearing a little green bikini to an African war.
“If I is not in mine costume than I is not Batman.”
“Do you need to be Batman all the time?”
Charlie nodded. “Yes, because if I is not Batman all the time then mine Daddy dies.”
“Inside, you know, I am only a village girl. I would like to be a village girl again and do the things that village girls do. I would like to laugh and smile at the boys. I would like to do foolish things when the moon is full. And most of all, you know, I would like to use my real name.”
I smiled and watched Charlie running away with the children , with his head down and his happy arms spinning like propellers, and I cried with joy when the children all began to play together in the sparkling foam of the waves that broke between worlds at the point. It was beautiful […] and that is a word I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language.
