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Chapter 21
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Smiled Beads, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Faith
Narrative, Memory, and Fragmentation
Displacement and Identity
Women, War, and Survival
Charity vs. Sharing
Summary
Analysis
Clemantine writes her story: once, there lived two girls in a land of hills. The girls play in their mother’s garden and wear bright dresses. One day, they see fear on their parent’s faces. They visit their grandmother, but her face is also afraid. Their grandmother tells them to run. The girls travel by foot, bus, and boat for seven years. Soon, they are no longer children. Then they fly on a plane to a land far away. The younger sister tries to be a child again. She finds new parents and has new experiences. Wherever she goes, people think she’s magic. They give her back her original parents; they give her money and status.
This fable of Clemantine’s story highlights its main points. Clemantine seems to see the biggest tragedy of her story as the loss of her childhood. The fable explains how the constant traveling by foot, bus, and boat cause her to grow up long before her time. She also explains how the world gave her back everything she lost but that somehow this isn’t enough to restore her childhood. Nothing can make up for lost time.
Themes
One day, the younger sister dresses like she dressed as a child and poses for photos in a garden. She sits among flowers like the flowers her mother used to grow. The sunshine makes her feel whole. She tries on dresses of every color. Every day, she looks at these pictures. She tries to believe that she is beautiful, strong, brave, and hurt all at once. She tries to keep her memories ordered in time. She wants to tell a true story, but her history makes no ending ever feel right.
Clemantine’s character in her fable feels whole and at home when she dresses like she’s a child again. In order to describe herself, she needs to use a language where “hurt” and “beautiful” can describe the same person. Her memoir, in its non-linear form, proves that Clemantine still hasn’t found the logical, sequential story that she yearns for.
Themes
