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Josef: On the Atlantic Ocean – 1939, 10 days
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Refugee, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Coming of Age
Injustice and Cruelty vs. Empathy and Social Responsibility
Hope vs. Despair
Family, Displacement, and Culture
Invisibility and the Refugee Experience
Summary
Analysis
Geraldo, Señor Castillo, Luis, and Amara try to figure out why the boat’s motor won’t start, while Iván and Isabel scoop water out of the bottom of the boat because the sock with which they plugged the bullet hole has soaked through. Teresa and Señora Castillo sleep in the front of the boat.
Gratz depicts yet another way in which Isabel takes on the role of an adult in these times of crisis: having to literally keep their boat afloat while they sail to the U.S.
Active
Themes
Lito talks to Isabel and Iván as they work, telling Isabel that he has a brother, Guillermo, who lives in the United States. In the 1970s, the U.S. airlifted political dissidents from Cuba to the U.S., and Guillermo chose to go as well. But Lito decided to stay because Cuba was his home. He says, then, that it was a mistake to leave on this “sinking coffin,” because Cuba isn’t worse now than it ever was. Iván then asks if Cuba would ever get better.
Lito, as he elaborates in this chapter, feels that remaining tied to one’s culture is just as important as being connected to one’s family, which is why he chose not to join his brother Guillermo in the U.S. He also starts to lose hope in the potential for a better future, symbolized by the fact that the water is rising and threatens to sink their boat.
Active
Themes
Lito says that they should have waited to leave Cuba, but Isabel is adamant that Geraldo would have been arrested. Lito counters, accusing Geraldo of risking his life and the lives of his family to go to the United States. And, Lito continues, Geraldo is taking Isabel away from her roots. He asks Isabel how she’s going to learn to count clave in Miami. Teresa wakes up and assures Lito that Miami is just “North Cuba.”
Active
Themes
Isabel worries about what Lito said—she has never been able to count clave, but always assumed it would come to her eventually. She wonders, now, if she will ever hear it. Isabel thinks, “Like trading her trumpet, had she swapped the one thing that was really hers—her music—for the chance to keep her family together?” Suddenly, they hear the rumble of an enormous tanker, heading right for them.
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