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Josef: Havana Harbor – 1939, 19 days (2)
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 slips into the water for her turn to float alongside the boat. The sun sets to the west, and Luis turns the engine off because they can’t navigate without the sun. Iván, who is also floating in the water, asks when they will get to Miami. Señor Castillo says tomorrow, hopefully, though this is the third day in a row that he has said this.
Just as Josef has lost hope that they will be able to leave the St. Louis, Isabel and the other refugees fleeing to Miami begin to feel similarly. As “tomorrow” continues to be a promise unfulfilled, they grow more and more uneasy that they may not make it, but have no choice but to continue on.
Themes
Teresa starts to shift and wince, and announces that she thinks she’s gone into labor. Isabel is both excited to see her baby brother born and terrified, wondering how her mother will have a baby on a boat in the middle of the ocean. But Teresa assures her that it could be a while before the baby is born. Iván asks what they’ll name the baby, but Teresa and Geraldo haven’t decided yet.
The baby only adds urgency to the refugees’ situation, and it also forces Isabel to continue to take more and more responsibility as an adult in her family. Just like the boat, the baby brings promise of a new kind of life in the United States, but they still have to overcome the ocean in order to make sure that he can be born safely.
Themes
Suddenly, Iván jumps while floating in the water, and Lito yells that there is a shark in the water. Isabel scrambles into the boat, and the water around Iván turns dark red. They haul Iván’s limp body into the boat and see that his right leg is a bloody mess. Lito cries out for a tourniquet, and Geraldo tries to tie his belt around Iván’s leg, but the blood continues to gush, and they realize it is futile. Iván is dead, and they are trapped by the sharks.
Iván’s death is yet another way in which Isabel is forced to grow up far too soon. Seeing the death of her friend has a profound effect on her, as she deals with grief and loss in a way that most children who are not refugees don’t have to, even under the most trying of circumstances.
Themes
