An Analysis of Little Bees Cultural Journey - Essay Example

An Analysis of Little Bee’s Cultural Journey From an outsider’s perspective, seeing a Caucasian couple out on holiday on a beautiful beach would be interpreted as the couple indulging in rest and recreation. In Chris Cleave’s book, “Little Bee (The Other Hand)”, the English characters of Andrew & Sarah ORourke intended to spend their time in Nigeria to relax and rejuvenate their dying marriage. What started out for them as a beautiful day to enjoy nature’s wonders unfolded into tragic events that involved danger and death. A short distance away from the O’Rourke’s peaceful existence, two Nigerian sisters were trying to escape the clutches of Nigerian men and their dogs who were hunting them for witnessing the massacre of village people. The sisters came upon the O’Rourkes and pleaded for help until the hunters caught up with them brusquely pulling the sisters apart from the O’Rourkes. Sarah refused to let the men take the girls. Andrew offered the men money to let the girls go. However, the leader of the men refused the money and negotiated to release the girls if Andrew will cut off the middle finger. He said, "White man been giving me this finger all my life. Today you can give it me to keep. Now cut off your middle finger mister and give it me"1 Upon rejecting their offer, Sarah realized that the men were serious so she took the initiative to cut off her own middle finger. The men agreed to release Little Bee in return for Sarah’s sacrifice but announced that her sister will die because of Andrew’s refusal to do as they wished. From the events that transpired, there were clearly cross-cultural communication issues that surfaced. In the short but heavily stressful interaction between the English O’Rourkes and the Nigerian men, the stumbling blocks to communication that Barna2 referred to impeded the understanding between the parties. Andrew held a stereotype of the men as desirous of money, that is why he offered them some in exchange of the girls’ release. He assumed that they were similar to him, coming from a culture where money talks and gets things done. He may have held on to a stereotype of the men being materialistic. He did not realize that the men were serious with their negotiation of him cutting off his third finger in exchange for the release of the girls. For them, humiliating a White man by cutting off his middle finger which they always found insulting when they are given the ‘dirty finger’ gesture was more rewarding than any amount of money he may offer. Andrew may have assumed that they would not go through with it and were just threatening them. His wife, Sarah, was more sensitive to the men’s non-verbal cues and was first to realize that they were indeed serious, so she immediately acted in desperation to cut off her own middle finger just to acquiesce to their demand. The fact that there was a language barrier made communication and negotiation difficult for them, add to the fact that Andrew was not able to read the urgency of the men’s message. Sarah acted immediately in the state of defensive arousal. More drama unfolded when the O’Rourkes left the beach. Little Bee’s sister was ruthlessly raped and murdered by the men and she stowed away on a British cargo ship en route to England. She was whisked away to an immigrant detention center where she stayed for two years. Within that span of time, she learned the “Queen’s English”, British history and culture from various reading materials available in the center. This was her way of empowering herself with survival skills when she is released from the detention center and goes out into the world. However, on her first day out upon her release, she and three other girls from the center took a cab but accidentally offend the taxi driver. He leaves without them and they end up walking down the hill. This first interaction with an individual from a different culture outside the detention center was a failure due to cross-cultural communication issues again. Still reeling from this unfortunate incident, a man on a tractor approached the girls offering help. The girls were immediately wary of the man, thinking he would be dangerous. In reality, the man, Mr. Ayers, is a kind person who owned the land the girls wandered into and he was accustomed to taking in people released from the detention center, clueless where to go and what to do with their lives after their detention. He offered them shelter in a clean, hidden building. It was a normal reaction for the girls to raise their defenses when they met Mr. Ayers. After unfavorable encounters with men in the past, they may have developed some preconceptions and stereotypes. Barna defines stereotypes as stumbling blocks for communicators because “they interfere with objective viewing of stimuli – the sensitive search for cues to guide the imagination toward the other person’s reality”3. However, Mr. Ayers proved them wrong. Little Bee searched for the O’Rourkes with the help of information derived from the driver’s licence and business card from Andrew’s wallet which she picked up from the beach in Nigeria after they left. She found Andrew first and wanted to avenge the death of her sister due to his resistance to cut off his middle finger. Andrew was shocked to see her alive. He was overwhelmed by her presence, flooding him with so much painful memories of the reason why he and Sarah were in Nigeria in the first place, and the guilt and regret of refusing to cut off his finger causing the death of a young girl. The compounded negative emotions drove him to take his own life by hanging himself. The high anxiety that the confrontation between Andrew and Little Bee produced was too much for Andrew to bear. Communication could have gone better had he been more calm. Little Bee’s current situation at that time could have easily made her listen to him better because she was also in dire need of help. However, the complicated background of Andrew’s thoughts and emotions hindered effective communication from ensuing. His own personal issues with his wife’s infidelity, his own guilt for the death of a young girl and the sudden appearance of her sister to haunt him of his past transgressions were too overwhelming for him to process. To escape the heaviness of his emotions, he committed suicide. Sarah’s own guilt for having an affair with Lawrence made her think that she was the cause of Andrew’s suicide. She and her husband may not have communicated well enough about their issues and it continued to simmer long after the tragic incident in Nigeria. She welcomed Little Bee and offered to care for her because she herself wanted to find out what happened after she and Andrew left the beach. She wanted to know how Little Bee could be associated with Andrew’s death because she suddenly appeared two years after that fateful day at the beach. Little Bee’s life with Sarah allowed her to learn more about the English culture. As she walked around town, she noticed how the people dressed, behaved, acted and realized just how different she was. Weaver explains, “We are usually unaware of our own culture until we leave it and interact with those who are culturally different. This interaction and conflict raises aspects of our own culture to our conscious awareness. The irony is that the way we often find our culture is by leaving it.”4 Little Bee initially felt she could easily adjust to the English culture because she knew the Queen’s English, however, she became aware that her own culture was impeding her from truly adopting the host culture. Her horrid past will always be part of her and she just could not shake it off just because she was in a different place. Lawrence, Sarah’s lover was determined to get rid of Little Bee due to her association to Sarah’s sordid experience in Nigeria. It could also be because he was not accepting of her cultural influence. The interactions between Lawrence, a white man, and Little Bee, a black girl were stereotypically portrayed in the book. Clashing in many aspects, both represented vastly different cultures. Although they may appear to be civil to each other, especially in front of Sarah, they were like the icebergs that Weaver illustrated in his theory.5 When icebergs float together, their tips are noticed as standing independent of each other, peacefully co-existing. However, what is not seen is the actual collision underwater. Outwardly, two people from different cultures are careful not to offend each other and put up friendly façade. Weaver explains, “The real conflict occurs at the internal level when values, thought patterns, central beliefs, perceptions and attitudes clash.”6 The incident of Sarah’s son, Charlie’s temporary loss brought on police assistance. However, Charlie was found even before the police arrived, and Little Bee was accidentally exposed as an illegal alien. When she was in detention again, she confessed to Sarah that she was actually with Andrew on the day that he hung himself. She explained what happened in detail. Instead of lashing out on Little Bee, Sarah was enlightened. The missing links of her husband’s death were slowly coming together. Sarah’s sudden interest in learning about Nigerian culture from Little Bee was awakened when she found out that Andrew had uncompleted work on it that he wanted to share with the world through his writings. Perhaps it was his way to cope with the traumatic experiences he had in Nigeria. Sarah wanted to continue the work her husband has started and decided that Little Bee could be instrumental in bridging the knowledge and cultural gap that existed. Upon deportation to Nigeria, Sarah and Charlie went with her. This was Sarah’s attempt to find out more about Little Bee’s culture. Even while heavily guarded, Sarah and Little Bee were able to walk the streets of Little Bee’s town as she shared more about her cultural background and the current situation of her country. This is when Sarah applied Hall’s dimensions of communication which are context, space, time and information flow .7 Context is the amount of information that is needed to be explicitly shared with the members of the society. Space is the personal space tolerated by the members of the society while communicating. Time is whether the society is monochromatic, or completing just one task at a certain time or polychromic or the nature of a society to be able to multi-task at any given time. Finally, information flow is the structure and speed at which messages are exchanged within the group. The combination of these dimensions may follow certain patterns for some societies. Sarah learned the differences between her English culture and Little Bee’s Nigerian culture and was open enough to accept what Little Bee had to offer her. In essence, the openness and understanding of people from different cultures cements gaps that stumbling blocks to cross-cultural communication may produce. Coming from a common experience, notwithstanding that it was a tragic one, two women were brought together to heal wounds from their past with a better perspective of why terrible things happen due to simple miscommunication. Barna claims that “There seem to be no universals of “human nature” that can be used as a basis for automatic understanding. The aforementioned assumption of similarity might be a common characteristic, however. Each of us seems to be so unconsciously influenced by our own cultural upbringings that we at first assume that the needs, desires and basic assumptions of others are the same as our own.”8 This rung so true in the theme of the book. However, in the end, it was the two women, Sarah and Little Bee who realized this truth but nevertheless accepted each other for who they were. Bibliography Barna, L.M. “Chapter 7: Stumbling Blocks in Intercultural Communication”, Intercultural Communication: a Reader. Ed. L. Samovar, Belmont: Wadsworth, 1994 Cleave, C., Little Bee: A Novel, Simon & Schuster, 2009 Hall, E.T. Beyond Culture, New York: Anchor Books, 1976. Weaver, G.R. “Culture and Communication” in Culture, Communication and Conflict: Readings in Intercultural Relations, revised 2nd edition. Gary R. \ Weaver, ed. Boston: Pearson Publishing, 2000. Read More