49 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine MarshNowhere Boy
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Omega Seamaster Watch
Ahmed’s Omega Seamaster watch is a motif that represents family and safety. Baba gives Ahmed the Seamaster watch before his apparent drowning. Ahmed knows that his great-grandfather gave the watch to Baba when he was young. However, after Ahmed’s father has apparently drowned, the watch is the only thing that he has left of Baba or of any of his family members. Every time Ahmed looks at the watch, he thinks of his father and his family. When Ahmed does not know what to do, he looks at the watch, even though “the Seamaster offer[s] no answers” (18). Ahmed protects the watch at all costs because it reminds him of his father and the safety that he felt while his father still wore the watch. When Ermir tries to take the Seamaster from Ahmed as added payment for smuggling him, Ahmed tries to “shield it from Ermir’s greedy eyes” (30), but when that does not work, he chooses to jump out of a moving vehicle and run from Ermir rather than part with the watch. When Ahmed and Baba reunite at the end of the novel, Ahmed tries to give his father his watch back, but “Baba refasten[s] it around his wrist” (330), telling him to keep it. In this way, Ahmed keeps the watch with him to represent the struggles he endured alone, knowing that he will always have a piece of his father with him.
Orchids
Marsh uses the motif of orchids to highlight the Challenges and Resilience of Refugees. When Ahmed finds the dying orchids on the windowsill in the basement, he thinks of his grandfather, who owned a plant nursery. Ahmed remembers that his grandfather talked to him about orchids and told him, “People give up on them too soon” (45). Ahmed decides to tend to the orchids because he realizes that they “just need a little help” (45). Although Ahmed does not make the connection explicitly, he connects his experience to the orchids because he wishes that someone would help him. Since no one seems willing to help him, Ahmed decides to alleviate his feelings of helplessness by actively helping the orchids. Although it seems small, helping the orchids gives Ahmed purpose because it shows a very physical manifestation of his presence in the world, even though he feels invisible. Ahmed feels invested in the orchid’s life, which is why he tells Max to take care of the orchid that he believes will bloom when he leaves the wine cellar. Due to Ahmed’s care, the orchids survive when they would have died if no one had come along to help them. Marsh reveals through this motif, and through Ahmed’s journey, the potential for growth and life that exists for refugees if people are willing to help them, even in small ways. Taking care of the orchids also allows Ahmed to give something back to the Howards for having unwittingly helped him to survive.
Magritte Painting
The Magritte painting depicting a man with a birdcage for a torso (The Therapist, 1937) is a motif that represents grief and loss. When Max sees the picture hanging on the wall in the wine cellar, he researches the painting and tells Ahmed that René Magritte, a Belgian artist, painted it. Although Max does not know it, his action of googling the painting for Ahmed makes Ahmed feel seen, and he wonders if “Max had also noticed that the man [is] sitting on a cliff, above the sea” (94). For Ahmed, the sea represents the loss of his father, and he soon discovers that Magritte has a similar relationship to bodies of water. At the exhibit, Ahmed reads the plaque about Magritte’s work and realizes that Magritte uses images of people with their faces covered to pay homage to his mother who drowned in a river, who the police discovered with her nightgown over her face. As Ahmed reads the plaque, “the word ‘drowned’ […] [strikes] Ahmed like a blow” (149). Ahmed relates to the paintings even more than before because he understands the grief that Magritte never recovered from. As Ahmed wanders around the exhibit, Ahmed “[can] tell that Magritte longed for his mother” (149). Marsh shows that Ahmed’s experiences connect with Magritte’s work because it expresses his own internal emotions of longing and grief over losing every member of his family.
