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 next morning, Mahmoud and Youssef are taken to a refugee camp in a cold, muddy field surrounded by wired fence. They are reunited with Fatima and Waleed. Mahmoud can see that being beaten had broken his father’s spirit, and Mahmoud realizes that he himself is the only one in the family who wasn’t “broken.”
Following the trauma of their journey, Mahmoud understands that he has at this point become the adult in his family because his mother, father, and brother have all been “broken” by their experiences, essentially succumbing to their despair.
Themes
Mahmoud isn’t ready to give up yet—he has hope that they can make a new life and be happy again. But he knows that trying to make this happen means drawing attention and being visible. He recognizes that being invisible is useful, like in Aleppo or in Hungary, but also that “being invisible had hurt them as much as being visible had.” He realizes that it largely depends on how other people react to you. He thinks, “If you were invisible, the bad people couldn’t hurt you, that was true. But the good people couldn’t help you, either.”
Mahmoud concludes that it is better to be visible. He looks and sees that some United Nations officials have come to observe the conditions of the camp. Mahmoud makes a decision and simply walks through the door of the main building to leave the camp. The Hungarian soldier guarding the door raises her gun at him, but stops when she sees the looks of disapproval from the U.N. observers.
The U.N. officials provide exactly the kind of visibility that Mahmoud is hoping for. Thus, Gratz highlights how agencies like these are crucial to providing support (in many ways) to the refugees.
Themes
The soldier calls for help from the other guards, wondering what to do, but Mahmoud simply continues walking outside. The other children in the camp start to follow him into the road, followed by the adults. The Hungarian guards yell after them, but don’t do anything to stop them. Waleed catches up to Mahmoud and asks what he’s doing. Mahmoud replies that he’s walking to Austria.
Gratz proves the power of visibility here. “Drawing attention,” as Mahmoud touches on earlier, is the only thing that allows him to escape. And this not only helps Mahmoud and his family—it allows the other refugees to benefit as well.
Themes
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