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Chapter 24
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
The girl asks Jamal and Bibi to sit with her. A woman nearby offers them her soup, but Jamal refuses, seeing that she has three small children. The teenage girl jokes to Bibi that the man in yellow overalls needs someone to “teach him a lesson.” She introduces herself as Rashida and Bibi points out that Rashida is a boy’s name. Rashida explains that she got her brother’s name when he died as a baby. Omar arrives, saying that she must hate her parents. Rashida says she doesn’t, explaining that they saved money to buy her a ticket to Australia. She tells Omar to go away, but Jamal explains that Omar is with them.
After the incident with the fire, Jamal, Bibi, and Rashida become better acquainted with one another. This highlights the bond that facing adversity can create between strangers. As parentless children on a smuggler’s boat, they already face a lot of the same challenges, and their joint confrontation with the sailor in the yellow overalls cements their bond.
Themes
Rashida asks if they have food and they say no, explaining that their parents have all of it. She takes water and sardines out of her pink suitcase and offers some to them. They eat the food and Bibi says she’s glad they met her. Jamal says his parents will pay for the food in Australia and offers to teach her a football trick in the meantime. Omar keeps on interrupting with annoying comments, but they all ignore him. Jamal and Bibi show Rashida how to bounce the ball from knee to knee. Rashida offers them sunblock, noting how sunburnt they are, and Jamal peeks inside her bag. He excitedly sees flour, realizing it is more valuable to them on the boat.
Rashida proves to be a valuable and generous ally, willingly giving up her food to her new friends. Though Jamal has no food to offer in return, he offers to teach Rashida tricks with the football, reciprocating her generosity and showing his good faith. In this way, the four children begin to form a mini-community on the boat, a chosen family to stand in for their own absent families until they all can be reunited.
Themes
