Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Smiled Beads, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Faith
Narrative, Memory, and Fragmentation
Displacement and Identity
Women, War, and Survival
Charity vs. Sharing
Summary
Analysis
Clemantine is a hard person to love. She wants to be loved but not needed. She doesn’t like to get comfortable, and she always maintains the right to disappear. Her body is a burden she carries around with her. It is hard for her to remember her body’s suffering and still find it beautiful. A woman’s experience with war is rape, whether it’s physical, psychological, or social. Thousands of men are murdered during war, but women die later from HIV and the effects of rape. Clemantine tries to compose herself so that she no longer fears men; the first time Ryan says he loves her, she feels he is trying to dominate and possess her.
Clemantine uses her struggles with love to illustrate how a woman’s experience with war is like rape, both literally and figuratively. During the genocide, thousands of women and girls were raped; those who weren’t lived under the constant threat that they eventually would be. Wherever women went, men sought to dominate and violate them. This rape, unlike murder—the threat men face—has long-term effects, whether it’s leaving a woman with HIV or with the inability to trust and love men.
Themes
Ryan is patient and gentle. He is white and “jocky,” a stereotypical American male. He and Clemantine are together for five years, and she depends on him. Once, Clemantine goes to Burning Man and Ryan stays home. When she wakes up in the tent, her brain snaps into survival mode; she wonders where food is and studies the campsite map. She feels lost and disoriented and looks at pictures of Claire’s kids on her phone to remind herself she has a family.
Whenever Clemantine is in a new place, her refugee instincts kick in; she becomes terrified and forgets she has a home and family. This shows that the average person’s ease with changing place is a privilege. A person with a history of displacement and trauma doesn’t necessarily have an inherent feeling of belonging and safety.
Themes
Clemantine finds Rwanda beautiful, but everyone there feels they deserve pain. On her most recent trip to Kigali, she stays in the lovely home of a man she calls Uncle. When Clemantine is not at Uncle’s house, she spends her time on the top floor of the public library, drinking lattes and looking out over the green hills of Kigali. She notices a huge new development of white apartment buildings. They are sterile and cold, seeming to say that those who live there don’t deserve beauty.
The book suggests that the new buildings Rwanda has put up reveal that Rwandans, deep down, don’t feel they deserve good things. This implies that their conception of the world and of themselves has been so altered by the genocide that they still can’t shake their shame and grief—even after many years.
Themes
In Rwanda, the last Saturday of every month is dedicated to cleaning up the country physically and emotionally. Clemantine joins a group that is clearing an overgrown field with machetes. Rwandans have gotten used to machetes again, but they bring back horrible memories for Clemantine.
When Clemantine sees the machetes in Rwanda, she has horrible memories of the machetes the Hutus used to brutally murder the Tutsis. She views this weapon as a permanent symbol of genocide.
Themes
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One afternoon, Clemantine lies on a blanket in Uncle’s garden enjoying the warm sun. For the first time since she was six, she feels relaxed. She is wearing bright, floral clothes. She feels like a child again. Before Clemantine leaves Rwanda, she and Vicki—a childhood friend of Claire’s—drive up the hill to watch the sunset. Clemantine knows it’s beautiful even if she can’t feel it. On the way back, they drive close to Clemantine’s childhood neighborhood. They buy warm chapati. Eating it reminds Clemantine of the bathrobe she had as a child.
Clemantine feels at home for the first time when she rests in the sun in a garden in Kigali and when she is reminded of her childhood bathrobe. This shows that Clemantine feels at home only when she feels like a child again. Her only memories of feeling at home are from before she was six years old. Her true self is trapped there in the years before she was six—that is, when she was happy.
Themes
Before Clemantine went to Rwanda, she and Ryan talked about getting married. Clemantine doesn’t want to get married; she thinks marriage is possession. Ryan loves Clemantine more than she loves herself, and so she pushes him away. When she returns from Rwanda, Ryan has moved out of their apartment. He knew her deepest fear was being abandoned, but he’d taken his stuff and gone. All Clemantine’s fears come rushing back. She stands in her empty apartment and tries to breathe.
Clemantine pushes Ryan away because she can’t trust anyone to actually protect and love her: she has opened herself up many times before and has been hurt as a result. Ryan’s way of breaking up with Clemantine makes her worst fear come true. This all shows that the lack of trust a person with trauma develops can ultimately threaten their relationships and make their worst fears come true.
Themes
