Trauma and Coming of Age
Refugee centers on the stories of three children forced to flee from their homes: Josef, a 12-year-old Jewish boy fleeing Germany during World War II; Isabel, an 11-year-old Cuban girl attempting to cross the ocean to Miami in 1994; and Mahmoud, a 13-year-old Syrian boy caught in civil war in 2015. Because Gratz uses three children as the lenses through which readers experience the story, the book also tracks the coming of…
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Injustice and Cruelty vs. Empathy and Social Responsibility
In Refugee, Gratz explores how non-refugees treat those who are journeying through or landing in their home countries, weaving patterns among the people who meet Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud. Gratz employs two kinds of non-refugees in his novel: those who dehumanize or ignore the protagonists’ plights, and those who are empathetic and attempt to help. Gratz demonstrates how when a group of people is dehumanized, it is easier for others to…
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Hope vs. Despair
Refugee’s three storylines focus on three societies in the throes of their worst political crises, to the point where the society as a whole has succumbed to a kind of despair. Likewise, Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud face myriad obstacles, setbacks, dilemmas, and severe tragedies as a result of those conflicts. But as much as they are unable to control the conditions that they are forced to face, the novel’s three protagonists and…
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Family, Displacement, and Culture
All three of Refugee’s protagonists are forced to flee the only culture they have ever known, but Josef and Isabel in particular fear the erasure of their personal cultural identity, or a future inability to connect to the place they once called home. Gratz refutes the idea that they will lose this sense of culture, however, due in large part to the fact that Josef and Isabel remain connected to a family that shares…
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Invisibility and the Refugee Experience
One of the aspects of being a refugee that is particularly difficult for Mahmoud is feeling invisible. Mahmoud is the only one of the three protagonists whose journey frequently causes him to interact with people native to the countries through which he is traveling. As he moves from Syria to Germany, he grapples with the idea of whether it is better to be seen, or better to blend in with the crowd and make as…
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