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
Lesbos is another tent city filled with refugees. But the place feels mournful, as many people here lost someone in the crossing from Turkey. Fatima continues to go from tent to tent, asking about Hana. Mahmoud continues to blame himself for losing his sister. Youssef tells Fatima that Hana probably went ahead of them, and that they should continue their journey. Mahmoud tries not to think about alternative things that could have happened to her.
Not only does Mahmoud have to deal with the weight of giving away his sister, but he also has to deal with the ramifications of that choice on his mother’s mental health, and the possible consequences of what could have happened to Hana. These are heavy burdens that Mahmoud’s traumatic situation has caused him to face.
Themes
That morning, Mahmoud, Waleed, Fatima, and Youssef take a ferry from Lesbos to Athens. The inside of the ferry is like a hotel, clean and filled with glass tables and white chairs. Mahmoud and Waleed explore the ship, going up to the top deck to watch as the ship pulls away from Lesbos.
The ferry to Greece evokes some of the same descriptions as the St. Louis does for Josef—after their terrifying ordeal in the water, it provides a beacon of hope that they will be able to make it to a new life.
Themes
Mahmoud then notices a refugee laying out a mat for prayer. Mahmoud and Waleed join him, but Mahmoud can’t help but notice the uneasy looks from some of the tourists on the ship. Mahmoud can hear the disgust in their voices, and thinks to himself that other people only see refugees when they do something that others don’t like—that’s when the refugees can no longer be ignored. Mahmoud’s instinct is to disappear, but he begins to wonder if being invisible does more harm than good: “if no one saw them, no one could help them.”
After Mahmoud’s revelations in the water that it may not be a good thing to be invisible, he has those feelings reinforced here—he knows that other people see refugees like him, but only when the refugees are doing things that bother them. This is an unfair expectation placed on the refugees: to ask them not to do anything that might bother the tourists, such as peacefully and freely practicing their religion. Mahmoud realizes the need to counteract these prejudiced views of the refugees.
Themes
When they arrive in Athens, Youssef discovers that they don’t have the right papers to travel past Greece, and it will take a week to get the papers. Waiting a week means more expenses, and so instead they decide to take a train to the border of Macedonia and sneak across during the night.
Gratz also counters some of the critiques surrounding refugees: that they are doing something illegal. But he demonstrates how difficult it can be for people who have lost everything to wait for papers or to know how to get the right papers. Instead of criticizing people for how they try to make a new life for themselves, the novel implies that society should instead focus on helping those people access the resources they need to make the transition to their new country.
Themes
Get the entire Refugee LitChart as a printable PDF.
