Horror and Trauma Theme Analysis

As a Nigerian oil war refugee and genocide survivor, Little Bee witnesses numerous horrific events in her brief lifetime that shock both Sarah and the reader, though nonetheless reflect the bleak reality of many parts of the world. Through Little Bee’s narration, the novel suggests that the developing world suffers many horrors that the developed world conveniently turns a blind eye to, and that those horrors can lead to life-altering trauma.

The horrors that Little Bee and other refugees experience in a developing world compared with the relatively placid life they experience in England speaks to the way that people in the developed world have largely managed to shield themselves from the chaos and suffering that abounds elsewhere in the world. As a 14-year-old girl, Little Bee listens as mercenaries rape and beat her sister Nkiruka to death and then cannibalize her body. She witnesses her entire family and countless other people die in a genocide for the sake of an oil war. Yevette, a Jamaican refugee, implies that she saw her children murdered as a political retaliation for an unknown action. As Little Bee looks around at the other women in the immigration detention center, including Yevette and two others that she is released with, she knows that each of them is from a different part of the world, and each has a horrific story that always begins with, “The men came and they…” That Little Bee and other refugees have witnessed and experienced numerous horrors around the world suggests that such horrors are far more common than people in the developed world may be prone to believe.

Little Bee thinks that the absence of such horror in a developed country like England is particularly evident in its citizens’ preoccupation with horror films, which allow them to briefly feel the terror that has gripped Little Bee for years, but then quickly rid themselves of it. She reflects, “Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself you are not suffering from it,” confirming that developed countries like England are largely protected from the horrors of global conflicts in the developing world. At a gas station, Little Bee hears the whine of gasoline pumping into a vehicle and thinks of her family’s screams, suggesting that the oil her family died over powers the developed world. This further suggests that not only does the developed world conveniently ignore many horrors around the world, it may even benefit from them by importing resources that were won through horrific violence. However, Little Bee recognizes that isolated horrors still occur in the developed world as well. When Sarah briefly thinks that Charlie drowned in the River Thames, her terrified screams remind Little Bee of the first time she found a dead body in the jungle and realized that horror is a part of her world, suggesting that horror still exists in the developed world, though certainly not in the overwhelming manner it does elsewhere.

Little Bee’s traumatic nightmares and fixation with suicide suggests that even though she has physically escaped the danger of the horrors she saw and experienced, those horrors deeply traumatized her and thus live on in her mind. Although Little Bee escapes the conflict in Nigeria, she realizes that the horrors follow after her. “I stowed away on a great steel boat, but the horror stowed away inside me. When I left my homeland I thought I had escaped—but […] I started to have nightmares. […] It was a heavy cargo that I carried.” Even though Little Bee is able to physically remove herself from danger, the horrors of her past are burned into her mind. Beyond nightmares, Little Bee’s trauma makes her think constantly of suicide. To prevent the scenario of her ever being captured and tortured like Nkiruka if “the men” come for her, Little Bee makes a habit—even a private game—of imagining how she would kill herself in any given situation. For instance, if someone tries to capture her while she was dining with the Queen of England, Little Bee imagines she could stab a sharp lobster claw through her neck. Little Bee’s suicidal ideas seem to be a direct result of her traumatic past, a way to protect herself from having to experience more horror in the future.

Sadly, such trauma and suicidal ideas even follow Little Bee and other refugees into relatively safe places. After Little Bee, Yevette, and two other women are released from detention and meet Mr. Ayres, a kindly farmer who gives them food and shelter, one of the women hallucinates and then hangs herself during her first night of freedom, unable to cope with the things she has seen. Little Bee herself continues her private suicide fantasies even in locations that should be completely safe, such as Charlie’s daycare center. The fact that such trauma follows characters even into completely safe environments suggests that traumatic experience often prevents people from ever feeling safe at all.

Little Bee’s persistent trauma over events that happened years before suggests that such trauma is tragically long-lasting and not easily dismantled. When a psychiatrist in the detention center tells Little Bee she should “move on” and stop dwelling on the horrors she has seen, Little Bee laughs at her, thinking the psychiatrist must think letting go of trauma is as simple as climbing through a window. Likewise, when Little Bee recounts Nkiruka’s brutal murder to Sarah, Little Bee tells Sarah that it took a full year before she felt like she was even able to think clearly, suggesting that the traumatic effects of witnessing such horror are often long-lasting, persisting for years if not decades. Little Bee’s account of her horror and trauma has no clean resolution or happy ending. The novel instead depicts such trauma as a long-lasting, life-altering, tragic effect of experiencing the horrors that the developed world has largely closed their eyes to and shielded themselves from.