Little Bee

Sarah is sensitive when she explains Lawrence’s visit to Little Bee as they drive to buy milk for Charlie. Little Bee, however, understands: “We are all trying to be happy in this world” (179), she explains, and Lawrence is a choice that can make Sarah happy. In Little Bee’s mind, “a dog must be a dog and a wolf must be a wolf and a bee must be a bee” (180). Sarah is thankful for her understanding.

Little Bee thinks that it would be difficult to explain Sarah’s life and future to the girls at home. Only when she came to Britain did she really learn about the oil conflict in her home village; “the future” of her country “looks like gasoline” (180). As Little Bee recalls the fight in her village over gasoline, Sarah takes her car to fill up on it. She wonders at the fact that she still does “not know what gasoline truly looks like” (181).

Without the gas conflict, the world could have been peaceful. At home, “we knew what we had: we had nothing”; the British world, “your world,” and “our world had come to this understanding” (182). Little Bee “did not miss having a future” because she did not think herself “entitled to one” (182).