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Josef: American Coast – 1939, 21 days
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Refugee, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Coming of Age
Injustice and Cruelty vs. Empathy and Social Responsibility
Hope vs. Despair
Family, Displacement, and Culture
Invisibility and the Refugee Experience
Summary
Analysis
Isabel starts to cry upon seeing Miami, because Iván was so close to making it to the U.S. Suddenly, however, the boat starts to break apart, and water streams in through the hull. They all move to the front of the boat, but the boat starts to sink under the weight of the water and all of them. They try desperately to bail the ship.
Even as the shore of Miami is within view, the refugees continue to teeter between hope and despair. They are so close, but like Iván, the water could quickly cut their progress short. Again, the boat rapidly filling with water symbolizes the difficulty of trying to maintain hope in the face of adversity and setbacks.
Themes
Isabel then gets an idea, and starts to kick at the engine to pry it off of the boat. Amara joins her, and they are able to get it off of the boat and into the water, lessening some of the weight. Lito wonders whether they should row to shore or try to swim the rest of the way. Suddenly, an electronic siren starts up. A voice says in English, then in Spanish, that the boat is the U.S. Coast Guard and that they are in violation of U.S. waters.
Even while the water pushes in, Isabel devises a way to keep as much water out of the boat, working hard to avoid succumbing to despair in kicking the engine over the side of the boat and giving it some more buoyancy. Following this success, however, the lack of empathy and compassion on the government’s part rears its head, as even after coming all this way and risking their lives, the Fernandezes and Castillos could still be sent back to the very destitution they fled in Cuba.
Themes
