Little Bee Essay -- Literary Analysis, Chris Cleve

Little Bee, by Chris Cleve, is a novel that explores unthinkable evil, but simultaneously celebrates its characters in their ability to transcend all that weighs them down, including their pasts, their secrets, and their flaws. For the character of Little Bee, identity is inescapably tied to ethnicity, nationality, gender, race, and class. A representative passage of the book that explores Little Bee’s point of view (both its unceasing optimism and stark realism) occurs in the final chapter: Little Bee is awoken from a good dream, and then comes the ominous first sentence, â€Å"There is a moment when you wake up from dreaming in the hot sun, a moment outside time when you do not know what you are† (Cleave 258). Little Bee is questioning her identity at just the moment when she should be most sure of it. Because Little Bee has been seeking a home, a family, and belonging, and has seemingly found it, the reader realizes that it is still uncertain. Still there is hop e: Little Bee is hampered by the weight of her past; yet she is a character that has proven she can overcome the boundaries of her identity and change her station in life. The book as alternates between the points of view of Sarah and Little Bee, though this section is told in Little Bee’s voice. It is critical that the final chapter be her perspective, given that the so much of the book deals with the lack of western knowledge of people like Little Bee, the silence regarding their stories, and the healing power of storytelling. The most significant element of voice in this passage is the tonal shift between its two paragraphs. In the first paragraph, Little Bee is coming out of her dream and the narration is reminiscent of that half-awake state. The second paragra... ...ned. She will stay herself, â€Å"as the shape-changing magic of dreams whispers back into the roar of the ocean† (Cleave 259). It is a foreshadowing of her final decision. She does not choose to flee or fight, but instead to surrender herself for the sake of Charlie, because he is young and will continue the dream for her. The reader takes from Little Bee the idea that identity is fluid and one’s own self-perception can be a tool of transcendence. Little Bee’s circumstances require that she reinvents herself from village girl, to refugee, to member of an upper-class British family. Because of her brain, her language, and her imagination, she cannot be marginalized, even though she must succumb to evil. To the reader, Little Bee will remain as free as the wind and as peaceful as the undisturbed sand, because she has offered her voice and her story as testimony.