Endangered

Sophie is a 14-year-old girl who left Congo at age eight to live with her father in Miami, Florida. She is half-white and is the only African in her American school. Each summer, Sophie returns to Congo to spend time with her mother, Florence, and while there, she buys numerous notebooks that she takes back to school and sells to her friends and classmates. This allows her to share her culture and heritage with her peers in a positive way. Sophie has many freckles on her face, an aspect that marks her as a foreigner. Sophie’s physical appearance helps her to navigate the dangers of Congo, as her African heritage makes her a bigger target than her American heritage. Sophie is also very smart and adaptable. She knows three languages—English, French, and Lingala—and easily fits into new situations and contexts by analyzing her surroundings and changing her behavior accordingly.

Sophie is a dynamic character because the novel’s plot centers primarily on her character development as she overcomes many challenges. At the novel’s beginning, Sophie is immature and makes childish decisions. For example, Sophie buys Otto thinking that she is acting like her mother would by saving an endangered animal, when in reality, her purchase actually reignites the infant bonobo trade. Sophie knows that suffering is a large part of Congo culture for both humans and animals, yet she does not understand how to effectively alleviate that suffering as her mother does. Throughout her journey, Sophie learns many lessons that help her to become a more mature young woman. She learns more about the bonobos’ social hierarchy through her interactions with Anastasia, how to forgive herself for her mistake in buying Otto and causing the twin bonobos’ deaths, and how to determine who to trust and who to avoid. These and other lessons will ultimately help to Sophie navigate a complex world more adeptly as an adult. In fact, these lessons change Sophie so much that she comes to view Congo differently. In the beginning, Sophie looks down on Congo as a country that is constantly at war and that has much less technology and fewer comforts than America. However, her experience in the bush teaches Sophie that Congo’s culture is much more beautiful than she realized. She changes her perspective so much that she decides to live in Congo after the war is over instead of returning to America. Furthermore, Sophie devotes herself to helping the Congo people by returning after college and working for a non-profit organization to help build stronger communities.

Another significant change that Sophie makes to her character is to resolve the underlying conflict with her mother. At the beginning of the novel, Sophie resents Florence for prioritizing the bonobo sanctuary over anything else. Florence’s decision to stay in Congo rather than moving to the United States makes Sophie feel that her mother cares more about the bonobos than she does about her family. However, this rift heals significantly when Sophie and Florence reunite in Ikwa. Sophie’s relationship with Otto also helps her to fully understand why her mother loves bonobos and has devoted her life to helping them. Sophie also learns that her parents’ divorce resulted from more than Florence’s devotion to the bonobo sanctuary. When the teen sees how her parents work together to rebuild Florence’s house and the sanctuary at the end of the novel, she realizes that there is far more to her parents’ relationship than her young mind understood. This realization further helps to heal Sophie’s relationship with her mother, even to the point that she chooses to stay in Congo when her father returns to America.