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Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Boy Overboard, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Immigration, Family, and Home
Identity and Ancestry
Hope
Gender and Discrimination
Summary
Analysis
Jamal wakes as their dad drives the taxi off the road. They stop beneath “tape-trees”––telephone poles covered with confiscated cassette tapes––and stretch their legs. Their dad leads them to an abandoned shop and explains he’s going to pick their mom up at the football stadium. Privately, he gives Jamal money and instructions for returning to their village in case he does not return. Jamal and Bibi have breakfast, and Jamal tries to cheer her up with football stories. Suddenly, Jamal realizes that their parents must be telling the government how good they are at football so that their family can stay. Jamal thinks it would help if he and Bibi were there, too.
Leaving the familiarity of his home village, Jamal encounters “tape-trees” along the road—which highlight the government’s censorship and oppression. Though this is a clear illustration of the government’s radical intolerance, Jamal is still hopeful that he and his sister can convince the government to let them stay and believes his father has the same idea. This suggests that Jamal has yet to truly accept the reality of his family’s predicament. Though it seems unlikely his father would be trying talk to the government about his children’s football skills, Jamal cannot yet accept the alternative. He needs to believe there is a still a way to stay in his home country.
Themes
