Hope vs. Despair Theme Analysis

Refugee’s three storylines focus on three societies in the throes of their worst political crises, to the point where the society as a whole has succumbed to a kind of despair. Likewise, Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud face myriad obstacles, setbacks, dilemmas, and severe tragedies as a result of those conflicts. But as much as they are unable to control the conditions that they are forced to face, the novel’s three protagonists and their families are able to choose how to react to these hardships. While the characters frequently oscillate between feelings of hope and despair, Gratz shows the importance of never giving into despair completely. Only by keeping a shred of hope alive are the characters able to try to find a better life in a new country.

Gratz indicates early in each of the three narratives how the characters’ respective societies have become miserable and oppressive. Yet despite this, Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud, along with their families, all choose to seek out a better life rather than give up. For Josef, the rise of Nazism plunges German Jews into terror. Josef’s house, and many other Jewish people’s houses and businesses, are completely ransacked during Kristallnacht. Many Jewish people are sent to and killed in concentration camps, to the point where Jewish people are afraid to be identified as such and stop congregating in public places together. Even though Josef isn’t happy to leave Germany, he knows that going to Cuba represents his family’s only chance for a better life. Isabel lives in Cuba in 1994, where the consequences of the Soviet Union’s fall are causing steep food shortages, and Fidel Castro’s oppressive regime imprisons anyone who might criticize the society, as well as anyone who tries to leave it. Isabel and her family are starving, and when Castro finally allows people to leave the country, Isabel and her family immediately jump at the opportunity to make a new home in America. In Mahmoud’s narrative, Syria is locked in a brutal civil war, an outgrowth of the Arab Spring that swept the Middle East beginning in 2011. Syria is experiencing constant bombings, with soldiers from both sides threatening and killing civilians. When Mahmoud’s apartment is bombed, Mahmoud recognizes that there no ambulances or police cars are coming to help them because there “[aren’t] any left.” In the midst of this country in severe crisis, Mahmoud’s father Youssef recognizes that their only option is to find a new place to call home. In each of these cases, the country is at its lowest point, but Gratz demonstrates the necessity of preserving a sense of optimism. Even though the characters face difficult journeys ahead, their hope allows them to believe that those struggles might ultimately be worth it.

Gratz then establishes how the characters maintain that optimism along their journeys. For each storyline, Gratz uses the dangerous ocean to symbolize the constant threat of despair and the potential to succumb to hopelessness. At the same time, boats represent the desire to stay afloat even in these difficult circumstances, as the characters literally fight to keep their heads above water. For Josef and his family, the MS St. Louis represents a means of escaping Germany and a path to “a new life.” The ship is a way of keeping their spirits aloft on their journey after so much fear and anxiety in Germany. Even though the boat is ultimately forced to turn back and leave them in France, it still serves its function as an opportunity to escape Germany and find a new beginning. The boat that Isabel and her family use to escape Cuba shows the tenuousness of their hope and their flagging optimism throughout their journey. Soon after Isabel and her family leave, police officers shoot at them from the shore, and a bullet tears a hole in the side of the boat. They are forced to bail water the entire time they are crossing the ocean, even to the point where they have to swim alongside the boat instead of riding within it to lessen the weight that the boat has to carry. Though Lito calls the boat a “sinking coffin,” Isabel recognizes that it is their only path to find a better life. Like the boat, the family’s hope sometimes falters, but they never abandon the belief that they can make it to Miami. Mahmoud similarly journeys by boat during the leg from Turkey to Greece—but it capsizes in a severe storm, and his whole family must tread water for hours. Mahmoud’s mother, Fatima, tries to make sure to keep his baby sister, Hana, above the water, and when another boat passes, Mahmoud insists that they take his baby sister to safety. This boat represents not only a way for Hana to have a better life, but means to survive at all.

Gratz also highlights one word in particular that captures the dual nature of hope and despair: the word “tomorrow” (or in Spanish, “mañana”). “Tomorrow” becomes a refrain that people often repeat to refugees in each story—when Josef wants to know when they can disembark from the St. Louis once they have arrived in Cuba; when Isabel wonders when they might arrive in Miami; when Mahmoud and his family attempt to catch the boat from Greece to Turkey. The word touches on both feelings of hope and despair: hope, in that tomorrow might bring them closer to their goal, and despair, in that they still have to wait, and that their fates are at the mercy of others. Even though each of them are frustrated by this refrain of “tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,” each one maintains the sense of hope that tomorrow might deliver a better life. Though not all of the characters’ life stories end happily, only by maintaining this optimistic view of “tomorrow” can they even try to find that better life.