Themes
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
Aaron is in another panic, stacking every piece of furniture in their room against the door in terror following the incident with Schiendick, even after Josef and Rachel have cleaned the cabin up. Ruthie crouches in a corner, crying and hugging her mended stuffed bunny. Josef is afraid, too, seeing his father as a “crazed ghost.” After stacking everything he can, Aaron hides under the desk at the back of the room.
Following what Aaron has experienced at Dachau, Schiendick’s cruelty only reinforces how the Nazis have further dehumanized the people that they have sent to the concentration camps. Even to Josef, Aaron is no longer a man—he has been rendered a shell of one.
Themes
Rachel tells Ruthie to go to the pool, and she tells Josef that she’s going to get a sleeping draught to calm Aaron. Josef warns her that if the doctor knows he’s not well, they might not let Aaron into Cuba. Rachel says that she’ll say it’s for her—that she hasn’t been sleeping. Josef is anxious to be left alone with his father as his mother and sister pull apart the barricade and leave their cabin.
Even though Josef has become a man under Jewish law, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he is ready to become an adult. Here, he shows his hesitation to be responsible for Aaron when his mother leaves him alone with his father.
Themes
Rachel returns within minutes, but she is panicked now, too. She says that the doctor made her drink the sleeping draught after she said it was for herself. She quickly falls asleep, and Josef grows worried, not knowing how to take care of Aaron. Josef suddenly realizes that he’s now “the only adult” in the family. He can’t go to anyone for help, and he also knows that he has to take care of Ruthie.
Despite the fact that Josef may not be fully ready to be the adult in the family, the trauma that they have experienced has necessitated it. Aaron is mentally unstable and Rachel, through an unfortunate turn, is now incapacitated. These are the added pressures that Josef experiences as a child refugee.
Themes
Suddenly, Aaron asks Josef if he’s seen anyone drown. Josef doesn’t respond, and Aaron talks about how at the evening roll call at Dachau every night, the Nazis would choose someone to hang upside down with his arms and legs tied together and his head in a barrel. They would then fill the barrel with water slowly so they could watch the man panic and thrash around, until he was dead. The other prisoners had to watch, and couldn’t say a word or move a muscle.
This is another extremely disturbing and graphic example of how the Nazis dehumanize and enact violence upon Jewish people. Not only do they have a complete disregard for their lives, but they also torture them—it’s understandable, then, why Aaron was so traumatized by his experience at the concentration camp.
Themes
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Josef starts to cry, knowing that he had threatened his father with going back to Germany. Aaron says he can’t go back there before closing his eyes and falling asleep. Josef then knows he has to find Ruthie at the pool as quickly as possible. On the way, he instructs a steward to bring the family’s dinners to their cabin that night. He is pleased, returning with Ruthie, that he survived “his first day as an adult.”
Josef is thrust into the role of an adult not only in terms of taking care of himself, but also in terms of making sure that his sister is being cared for as well. He takes on these responsibilities ably, making sure that she has dinner much like a parent would.
Themes
When Josef and Ruthie return, however, Aaron is no longer in the cabin. Josef instructs Ruthie to stay with Rachel, who is still asleep, and goes to search for his father. Josef runs into the passageway and searches for his father. He hears a commotion and sprints up to the deck. A woman screams and someone yells “Man overboard!” Josef slams into the railing and sees that his father has jumped into the ocean.
Aaron’s suicide attempt, particularly by drowning, shows just how deeply immersed in despair he is, despite being on a ship that will hopefully take him to freedom. Even after recounting the horrifying story of drowning, Aaron opts to die by the same means rather than face the dehumanizing torture of the Nazis again.
Themes
