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.
Themes
Challenges and Resilience of Refugees
Marsh explores the challenges and resilience of refugees through the experiences of Ahmed. Marsh’s description of Ahmed’s grief, along with the ingenuity that allows him to survive in Brussels, reveals the reality of refugees’ lives: both the discrimination they face and resourcefulness they show in responding to it.
Despite having been on a harrowing journey and finding himself in a strange place where he doesn’t speak the language, Ahmed does his best to hold on to his own identity as a Muslim, a Syrian, and a lover of plants, soccer, and comic books. He does not just survive in the basement but makes an effort to decorate his space. Even as he gathers food and loose change from the Howards’ house, Ahmed keeps a strict record of what he uses and never goes upstairs until he is invited, near the end of the novel. Yet his trauma cannot be erased. Ahmed wants to remain hidden in the basement of the Howards’ house and forget his existence so that he does not have to face the trauma of his family dying, but Max’s empathy and compassion break down Ahmed’s walls and give him a chance to share his story and begin to heal. He tells Max that the “bomb hit them direct” and that he feels haunted by the question of whether his family experienced pain before they died (138). Ahmed’s pain and grief culminate in him screaming toward the sky at Allah, “You should have made the bomb fall at night, hitting us all” (257). This statement comes at a moment when he feels most hopeless, and it marks a turning point in the story.
Ahmed’s experience as a refugee causes him to feel worthless and lost without his family, who will just become “names that [will] vanish and become anonymous numbers” (256). Ahmed’s feelings of helplessness and worthlessness stem from the attitudes of those in Europe who make him feel like he has done something wrong just by existing. Ahmed finally begins to heal from his trauma when he finds Baba and realizes that he feels that he “[is] a small boy and an ancient traveler” (329). As a refugee of war, Ahmed loses his childlike innocence while simultaneously wanting to remain a child and forget about the pain that surrounds him.
Living within a system that has not been designed to help outsiders gives rise to the challenges and resilience of refugees. Faced with bureaucratic hurdles, everyday people who may or may not be trustworthy, and often hostile authorities, refugees like Ahmed have to be creative in order to survive, even as they deal with almost unthinkable trauma.
Friendship Across Cultural Divides
Although the experiences of Max and Ahmed are extremely different, they develop a deep friendship that includes their relationships with Farah and Oscar as well. The group’s decision to create friendship across cultural divides reveals the importance of community and connection to the human experience. Throughout the novel, small commonalities lead to more profound connections. Gestures such as Farah helping Max on his first day of school, or Max and Ahmed joking about superheroes, provide the foundation for more profound and lasting connections.
Although Ahmed and Max are wary of each other when they first meet, they develop a strong connection, partially due to their openness and vulnerability with each other. Even though Max does not know much about Islam, he listens to Ahmed’s description of the religious imperative to “help poor and strangers” and trusts Ahmed’s experience rather than believing, as many authority figures in his life do, that “Islam [is] just some violent religion that [is] all about attacking non-Muslims” (95). Max expands his knowledge and connections across cultures when he asks Farah for help in getting Ahmed into school. Similarly, Oscar chooses to help Ahmed after he listens to his story about losing his father. Oscar connects with Ahmed over their shared grief at losing their fathers, as well as Ahmed’s admission that he wants to go to school because he “feel[s] in the world alone” (182). Oscar understands the loneliness and grief that Ahmed feels in a way that Farah and Max cannot understand. However, Ahmed and Max’s friendship deepens to the point that Max sacrifices his own safety to ensure that Ahmed returns to his father in Hungary. Max’s letter at the end of the novel, which helps Ahmed and Baba receive permission to enter America, reveals the significance of Ahmed and Max’s relationship. Even though they have not known each other for very long, Max feels completely changed through his friendship with Ahmed, which showed him a life and experience very different from his own. Max writes, “I tried to soften Ahmed’s existence, but it was really he who softened mine” (350). Although, from the outside, it appears that Max helped Ahmed in their friendship, Max knows that Ahmed was the one who changed him for the better and opened him up to feel empathy and compassion for people with different experiences than his own.
The Importance of Empathy in Global Issues
Throughout the narrative, Marsh highlights the importance of empathy in global issues, especially through Max’s shifting perspective as he learns the reality of the challenges and resilience of refugees. Through his friendship with Ahmed, Max learns the complexity of the Syrian crisis that goes beyond the xenophobia and racism that Europe promotes.
Before Max meets Ahmed, he questions the growing tension surrounding refugees that he notices from adults. Madame Pauline and Inspector Fontaine tell Max that “Europe used to be safe before [the refugees] arrived” and encourage Max to fear refugees and assume that most of them are terrorists (39). However, Max feels uncomfortable with this perspective, especially when he thinks of Farah. After Max learns that Ahmed lives in their wine cellar, he talks with his dad about the Syrian refugee crisis. He feels compassion for the refugees fleeing civil war and suggests that they house a refugee to help, but his father tells him that his job would not allow him to do that because it would be political. Max asks his father, “But what’s political about helping someone?” (84). Although Max’s father does not have an answer to Max’s question, the question fuels the rest of the narrative, as Max realizes that empathy is never political but often politicized. Although Max knows that he cannot solve the Syrian refugee crisis by himself, he chooses to do what he can to impact Ahmed’s life, whether that is enrolling Ahmed in school or reuniting him with his father. When Ahmed and Max arrive in Hungary but have no way of getting to the detention center, Max calls the refugee rights group, which sends Reka to pick them up. Although Hungary arrests any new refugee who comes across the border, Reka assures them that there are plenty of people in Hungary “who disagree with the government” and are “ashamed of the way [the government] treat[s] refugees” (314). Reka’s words give Ahmed a glimmer of hope because he realizes that even though the whole world seems to be against him, “there [are] always people who care[]” (314). Ahmed and Max’s friendship and adventures together reveal the importance of empathy and compassion because even as children, they bring awareness to the struggles of refugees around the world. Through Max’s compassion and empathy for Ahmed, Marsh reveals the importance of hope for people in need but that it all starts with having empathy for those who are struggling.
Throughout the novel, the true story of Albert Jonnart serves as the standard for the importance of empathy in global issues. As he weighs how much he should help Ahmed, Max regularly reflects on the sacrifices Jonnart made for his Jewish neighbors, particularly his son’s classmate Ralph Mayer. Jonnart becomes the model for Max’s activism, even though not everyone sees the same lesson in this story.
