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Isabel: The Straits of Florida – 1994, 1 day (4)
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
The boat Mahmoud’s family is set to take is a black inflatable rubber dinghy with a motor. Though it only looks like it has room for a dozen, 30 refugees wait to get on board. They pay 250,000 Syrian pounds (or 1,000 euros) per person for the boat. Mahmoud and his family put on their life jackets and climb on board, squeezing in tightly.
Even though they pay a large price for this less-than-ideal boat, the dinghy actually represents something much more. To Mahmoud, it is the thing that they have been hoping would come while they have been put off more and more, and which will provide them with a path to a new life.
Themes
Youssef assures Mahmoud that it looks like the trip will only last a few hours, looking at his phone through a sealed plastic bag for protection. He says that they only have to make it to the Greek island of Lesbos, and they can take a ferry from there to Athens afterward. They set out into the night. The boat is quickly tossed by the waves and it starts to rain hard. Mahmoud is soaked to the bone and the boat starts to fill with water. Someone suggests they go back, but Youssef and others insist they continue.
Still, the hope that Mahmoud and his family feels in getting to Greece is quickly countered by the difficult journey. Just as in Isabel’s boat, where the rising water represents defeat and hopelessness, the water starts to collect in Mahmoud’s boat and makes the refugees doubt that they will be able to make it to Greece.
Themes
Mahmoud thinks that this is worse than Syria. He thinks that he is “an invisible brown speck in an invisible black rubber dinghy,” and the ocean could easily swallow them and “no one in the whole wide world would ever know he was gone.” No sooner does Mahmoud think this than the boat hits rocks, and Mahmoud is sent tumbling into the water.
It is here that Mahmoud starts to recognize how being invisible can actually be a negative thing rather than a defense mechanism. It makes him anonymous to the outside world, and means that no one would be able to help them if tragedy strikes, as it does here.
Themes
