Cross-Cultural Relationships Theme Analysis

Little Bee and Sarah represent two different worlds: war-torn Nigeria and sophisticated London. Although they seem unlikely companions, both make a sincere effort to understand each other’s life and culture, and thus model both the struggles and benefits of cross-cultural relationships. Although there is much that separates them, Sarah and Little Bee’ relationship suggests that people from different worlds can learn from each other, and their shared human experience ultimately unites them.

Little Bee and Sarah come from contrasting worlds and experiences, which creates an initial divide between them. Little Bee is a teenage Nigerian refugee from a poor village who has never seen a city before her arrival in England; Sarah is an upper-class, sophisticated magazine editor from London. Little Bee’s primary concerns are mere survival and the loss of her family; before Andrew’s death, Sarah is primarily occupied with her career, the fashion world, and all the minor things about Andrew that irritate her. The first time that Little Bee and Sarah meet on a beach in Nigeria, the extreme cultural divide between the two women makes it difficult for Sarah to put herself in Little Bee’s shoes. When Little Bee tells Sarah that mercenaries are trying to kill her and her sister and begs for protection, Sarah cannot even comprehend the weight of what Little Bee is saying because the concept is so far beyond her frame of reference. In the moment, Sarah thinks, “I was a modern woman and disappointment was something I understood better than fear. The hunters would kill her? My stomach lurched, but my mind still asserted it was just a figure of speech.” Although Sarah eventually realizes that Little Bee is telling the truth, her reticence to believe what the girl is saying demonstrates the way in which such a sharp cultural divide can make it difficult for people to connect with one another or regard their experiences seriously.

As Little Bee and Sarah struggle to understand each other and make sense of the world the other person lives in, they each gain a new perspective that helps them understand their own lives better as well. Little Bee’s background and life-and-death struggle help Sarah to realize how banal much of modern life is and how little she knows about the rest of the world. After Little Bee fully recounts the way that Nkiruka was killed, Sarah recalls mournfully how insane it was for her and Andrew to take a vacation to Nigeria for the sake of “being unconventional” and the gall of unwittingly wearing a bikini in the midst of an oil war, while Little Bee and Nkiruka were running for their lives. The new perspective that Little Bee offers Sarah though their relationship helps Sarah to recognize that all the things she’d once obsessed over, especially her modern sophisticated career, suddenly seem insignificant.

After spending time with Little Bee, Sarah attempts to return to her magazine office, but the constant rushing of people and white noise of office machines “all seemed suddenly insane” in light of the fact that elsewhere in the world, people are suffering. This new perspective ultimately causes Sarah to quit her job to pursue more meaningful work. In a similar way, Little Bee’s relationship with Sarah offers her safety and support in the midst of an overwhelmingly painful and chaotic life. Sarah shows Little Bee the stability that the developed world affords, which is briefly symbolized by the icemaker in Sarah’s kitchen. Although it is a simple device, Little Bee finds herself entranced by the way it makes water into a solid, stable form, symbolizing the stability and dependability of modern life. This causes Little Bee to believe that “everything could be made solid again […] of only I could find the center, the source of all these small wonders,” suggesting that she can now envision an actual stable life for herself, rather than just running as she always has. Little Bee and Sarah both grow from their relationship with each other precisely because they are so different, which ultimately suggests that such a connection between two people from vastly different backgrounds may be difficult, but it is also beneficial to both.

Despite their cultural and personal differences, Little Bee and Sarah discover that they are both united by common human experiences. Little Bee and Sarah bond over pain at losing loved ones—Nkiruka for Little Bee and Andrew for Sarah—and especially over their love for Sarah’s son, Charlie, whom Little Bee forms a close connection with. In the final scene of the novel, after Little Bee gives herself up to Nigerian soldiers to save Charlie’s life, she watches as he plays in the waves with a group of Nigerian children and cries with joy to see him so happy—even though she herself will likely die. Little Bee says, “[He] was beautiful, and this is a word […] I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language.” Little Bee’s closing line suggests that although people from different parts of the world may seem utterly foreign to each other, as human beings there is so much that unites them just the same, such as the beauty of a healthy, happy child.