The language and honesty of Little Bee captured me from the very beginning. The personification of the British pound coin was intriguing and kept me turning page after page until suddenly I was listening to a young African girl speak far beyond her years about war in her country and time spent in the detention center in the United Kingdom. Little Bee effortlessly leads us through her life by comparing the UK with Nigeria by way of language. She describes how words mean different things in the UK, and how her sister and friends in Nigeria would never understand these differences. Little Bee also uses language to describe the difference in treatment given to people who are beautiful and people who can speak “the Queen’s English” as opposed to foreigners. Though she speaks the Queen’s English so eloquently that she is not second-guessed by the British, Little Bee feels the strangeness of the language coming from her and knows she is still the same Nigerian refuge she entered the detention center as.
Suicide is another repetitive idea that shows up surprisingly throughout the novel. Little Bee is so afraid of the men coming and taking her that she would rather kill herself than let that happen again. With any change in scenery, she creates an escape route, a quick way to commit suicide no matter where she is. Little Bee always slips her escape route in if the setting changes no matter what else she is talking about. This shows that she never lets her guard down; she is always expecting the worst and is prepared to die at any moment. Just as Little Bee will so easily accept her own death in the event that the men come, the girl with no name quietly takes her own life when she gets out of the detention center and finds she has nowhere to go. Death strikes again when Andrew hangs himself in his own house. Though we know the call from Little Bee was what pushed him to suicide, in the first 100 pages we still do not know the story between Andrew and Little Bee. I found it very interesting that I was so enthralled with the novel without even knowing the relationship between the main characters. I guess this question is what keeps us turning the page.
I also brought up the question of the role of suicide in the book. It seems to be an important motif. It is interesting that although Little Bee is always ready to commit suicide she is still very alive, while Andrew who hadn't planned to kill himself, was dead inside.
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