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Two Examples Of Hopelessness In Refugees By Alan Gratz

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HOPELESNESS In the book Refugee by Alan Gratz, we see the characters Mahmoud and Josef struggle with feelings of hopelessness. Mahmoud is young teenage Syrian boy in 2015 and Josef was a young teenage Jewish boy in 1930s nazi Germany. The characters feel hopeless because they both had to leave their home because of danger in their country. So, Mahmoud and Josef set off on their own journeys to find a safer home hoping that things would get better for them. Mahmoud had feelings of hopelessness due to war in his home country. In Syria, in 2015, the country was at war with itself - the civil war was destroying Syria. One example of his pain is when Mahmoud and his family were trying to find a boat that a man promised to take them to Germany in to escape the war; the boat never came and Mahmoud and his family had a sense of hopelessness, they were afraid that they were not going to have a chance to leave and if they did not leave, they would die. Another example is when Mahmoud’s boat capsized and him, his mom and sister could not stay afloat, so they had to give his sister away to a woman because he did not want her to drown. He felt hopeless, and sad, and scared that he would never find her again. These examples from Mahmouds …show more content…

In Berlin Germany in 1938 the nazis were invading Jewish homes to take them to concentration camps. Josef and his family boarded a ship that took them to Havana; then they turned around and headed towards France, it took them 1-year 1-month and 10 days (about 1 and a half weeks.) Their journey was long, and it caused many situations like his father going insane and jumping overboard off the ship and into the sea. Josef had to take responsibility and put matters in his own hands by taking care of his family. Towards the end of the book, he had to sacrifice his life to save his family and Ruthie Josef’s little sister was the only one that

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When Syria started to become more violent, Mahmoud became more fearful which caused him to seek refuge in becoming “invisible”. He held his head low, doing everything he could to not bring attention to himself. Later on in the book, we watch as Mahmoud realizes that sometimes, you must be seen in order to receive help. After he and his family are forced to find a place to sleep for a night, Mahmoud begins to understand that he must become exposed to others if he wants to stay alive. Watching a man in a car pass by him, “Mahmoud darted out into the car's headlights and waved the life jackets on his arms.

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