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
The ship begins to slow down, and Aaron starts to panic, saying that they have to hide or get off the ship to avoid the Nazis. Josef and Rachel try to restrain Aaron while he panics, and Josef explains that they’re slowing down because an old man on the ship has passed away and they’re holding a funeral, which only makes Aaron even more anxious because he thinks that the Nazis were responsible. But Josef explains that the man had been sick for a long time with cancer.
Josef continues to take on an increasingly adult role in his family, while his father is rendered more and more childlike in the way he acts. Because of the trauma Aaron experienced in the concentration camps, Josef must comfort him rather than the other way around.
Themes
Aaron finally seems to understand what Josef is saying, and insists on attending the funeral because he had seen “too many men die without funerals at Dachau.” Rachel and Ruthie stay behind while Josef and Aaron go to the A-deck for the funeral with a few other passengers. They rip their garments on the way—a Jewish tradition during funerals.
Here Gratz hints at yet another way in which the Nazis have dehumanized and degraded the Jewish people, in not giving them proper burials in the concentration camps.
Themes
As the funeral procession starts, Schiendick emerges from below deck. He introduces himself as the Nazi Party leader on the ship, and explains that German law dictates that a body buried at sea must be covered with the national flag—the Nazi flag. Aaron protests angrily and spits at Schiendick’s feet. Schroeder breaks up the two men, and says that they can make an exception in this case. Schiendick looks at Aaron and Josef for another moment, then storms away.
Gratz contrasts the empathy and understanding of Schroeder with the viciousness of Schiendick, who is insisting on using the Nazi flag simply to make a point and to continue to oppress the Jewish people on board the ship. He is knowingly being cruel, and yet does not hesitate to do so even at a funeral.
Themes
The funeral continues. After the rabbi gives a short prayer, the sailors slide the body of the man over the side of the ship. Josef takes sand from a nearby sandbox and throws it over the rail of the deck. Captain Schroeder and the other sailors salute the man by touching the brims of their caps. After the funeral, Josef notices Aaron lingering at the rail of the ship and looking at the water, saying that at least the old man didn’t have to be buried in “the hell of the Third Reich.”
Here, Aaron is meditating on his own tortured existence as a concentration camp survivor. His comment that Hitler’s Third Reich is equivalent to hell suggests that he may view death as preferable to continuing to live in such an oppressive society—a chilling implication, given that his mental health appears to be slipping.
Themes
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