Little Bee Poem

The deeper you sink

“I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world” (Cleave 138). This is one of the many quotes in the novel that are in reference to the ocean; however, I realized that when Little Bee stated this to Sarah, she was essentially explaining to her that trouble was not only centered in a malfunctioning third world country but it expanded to the first world countries as well. Trouble and the ocean are synonymous in the aspect that they both make up a large percentage of the world. Cleave writes in the concept of the ocean and the beach many times in Little Bee. Some of the ideas that are central to Little Bee regarding the history of the ocean with the characters are also principal in the poem, “The

I became extremely excited my third time through reading Neruda’s poem because I grasped the fact that it fit perfectly with Sarah. The poem itself was not too hard to grasp, it just took a minute to understand the relationship to Little Bee. Each line can be dissected and interpreted to show the correlation between the poem and the novel. “Walking on the sands/I decided to leave you” (1-2). I imagine that Sarah is the one reading this poem out loud and she has written this piece after what has happened to her in Nigeria. These first two lines bring me back to the moment in the novel where a couple has decided to mend their relationship in Nigeria, where they decided to take a walk on a beach, and on that beach trouble has arisen. They had no idea what was to happen, but decisions were to be made and in that moment one person decided that they needed to take a step forward. Sarah is the person who has made this brave decision whilst walking along the loose granular floor of the beach. She can slip at any minute as sand is not known to be a steady surface, yet Sarah knows that she must leave behind what is holding her