There’s always that one person who you’re ‘frenemies’ with. You don’t like them – wait, scratch that, you really don’t like them – but you still have to act like the two of you are friends. Whatever the reason might be, from trying to be polite simply in order to avoid getting in trouble, to acting friendly because your real friend is also friends with that person. This is the conflict happening in Little Bee by Chis Cleave between Little Bee, Lawrence and Sarah.
First of all, you need to get some background info about the characters to understand the conflict (okay this is gonna get messy so pay attention) Little Bee, an illegal immigrant from Nigeria who immigrated to England, had “accidentally” gotten out of the detention center she had essentially been kept prisoner in for two years, then gone to Sarah, the only person she knew in England. Sarah, having been in the wrong place at the wrong time when vacationing in Nigeria with her then husband Andrew, had cut off her middle finger in order to save Little Bee from the men planning to kill her – however, after that incident they didn’t meet again until Little Bee showed up at her doorstep two years later (Whoo! We’re almost done). Finally, the last person – Lawrence. Sarah, while still married to Andrew, had been cheating on him with Lawrence (yeah, I know, not exactly a flawless character – but in her (very weak) defense, it was an unhappy marriage). Lawrence worked at the Home Office, and was also married (wow, this book is just full of these people – but in his defense – oh, wait he has no defense, but that’s mostly because I don’t really like him – you’ll find out why later – so I don’t want to defend him). Then, after Sarah’s husband killed himself, he started coming over more often.
Now, the conflict that I’m actually supposed to be writing about. Lawrence, working in the Home Office, kept trying to convince Sarah to report Little Bee to the police so they would deport her to Nigeria, “‘I think you should wake her up and ask her to leave. I’m serious’” (Cleave 121). Like seriously, kept telling her to make Little Bee leave, “‘I want you to call the police and have her removed’” (121). However, (now you’ll see why Sarah is not half-bad despite the whole cheating issue) Sarah understood how terrible conditions were in Nigeria, and what Little Bee would face if she went back there – death. So, she stood her ground, even with the risk of the consequences if it was ever found out that she was harboring an illegal immigrant in her home, “Ask her to leave, Lawrence had said. But no, no, I couldn’t. We were joined by what had happened on the beach. Getting rid of her would be like losing a part of me” (124).
Lawrence, after trying his best to convince Sarah to get rid of Little Bee and realizing he was making no progress, turned to the other option – talking to the ‘problem’ itself – Little Bee. He confronted her while Sarah was sleeping and basically politely threatened to secretly report Little Bee to the police himself if she didn’t, “‘Will I turn you in myself, you mean?…I’ll do what’s best for Sarah’” (186). It’s like ‘Whoa man, way to win a girl’s heart – forcibly deporting her only real friend and confidante is totally gonna make her fall in love with you’. But, what Lawrence didn’t expect was for Little Bee to fight back. She cleverly realized that if Lawrence were to ‘tell on her’ now, after so much time had passed since she had started living illegally in England, he would get in trouble as well for allowing Little Bee continue, “I would find a way. I would find a way to tell her what you had done. And I would find a a way to tell your wife too. I would break both of your lives, Lawrence. Your family life and your secret life’” (188). That right there folks, is karma (I would just like to say I am in no way condoning illegal immigrants). Now Lawrence was in a difficult position – if he turned Little Bee in, he would get in trouble too – so, he reluctantly agreed not to report Little Bee to the police.
Well, that’s all it is for now. Lawrence is an all-around horrible person with very few redeeming traits (in my eyes anyways, I’m sure Sarah would think differently), and is now sucked into the giant secret Sarah and Little Bee are keeping. Little Bee and Lawrence are even better friends/enemies now. Phew! Everyone can be relieved – the drama is over – or is it? I guess we’ll see at the end of the book!
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Hi Anita!
I just want to start of by saying that I really love your hook, “There’s always that one person who you’re ‘frenemies’ with. You don’t like them—wait, scratch that, you really don’t like them—but you still have to act like the two of you are friends”. And I can totally relate to what you’re saying. The people I’m talking about aren’t exactly my friends, just two of my mother’s friend’s kids (I think the girl’s 10 and the guy’s 7), and for some reason, I just don’t like them. Nevertheless, I still have to act super polite in front of them, it’s like “Oh, so you just climbed onto my bed (without my permission), then onto the windowsill, and threw my souvenir I got from Egypt (which was a once in a life time trip) onto the floor and breaking it? No biggie! (not)”. Ugh! Seriously, I had to keep very polite smile on my face while shooting daggers at him, and just think, if he was that bad, what about his sister? I don’t even want to talk about it.
Sorry, I got a little side-tracked there, but anyways, I really like how you added a paragraph for background information. This way, people like me who haven’t read the book can understand what’s going on! Also, I think that you picked really good quotes to support your conflict example, because even I could see the tension between Little Bee and Lawrence. From your description, I can’t really bring myself to like him either (thats a little funny cause my resent blog post was actually about not being prejudiced), but seriously, what is up with that guy? Add threatening people to him being a cheater and you get one heck of a bad guy. Though, I have to agree with Jing Jing on the fact that he was trying to help Sarah (though he was going about it the wrong way).
In the end, I just have a few questions. First off all, how can someone just ‘accidentally’ get out of a detention center? (I would really love to hear more about this). And secondly, if you were Lawrence, and while trying to protect Sarah, you determine that Little Bee is a threat, how would you handle it? What would you do differently?
Anita, like always your writing is fantastic! Little bee knew from the very start she would be in a tough situation with a lot of risks and the only way for her plan to work was if she never got caught by the authorities. Of course Little Bee couldn’t stay isolated in order to live in the UK so she trusted Lawrence and Andrew to keep her secret but like you said, everyone has “frenemies” and in her unfortunate case it was Andrew. In the end it was worked out because both of them would be in legal trouble but their relationship still stayed as “frenemies”. There are so many people living the life Little Bee choose, which is to illegally live in a country and always fear deportation. Nearly 11 million illegal immigrants currently live in the US, most of them wanting a better future for their families. Currently in the States people hire illegal immigrants and now Latinos/Hispanics are the largest minority group in the US. Based on this book, do you think there is a vast number of illegal immigrants in the UK and how do British people view immigrants?
Hi Anita!
Okay, so first of all, I can totally relate to your hook, especially when you wrote: “There’s always that one person who you’re ‘frenemies’ with. You don’t like them… but you still have to act like the two of you are friends. Whatever the reason might be…” (hook). There are definitely people I claim are my ‘friends’ when in reality, I sort of despise them–especially my parents’ friends’ kids, I don’t know why I never get along with those people…
Anyways, I really enjoyed reading your blog post–you had a lot of opinions about Lawrence that hadn’t really occurred to me: “It’s like ‘Whoa man, way to win a girl’s heart – forcibly deporting her only real friend and confidante is totally gonna make her fall in love with you’” (paragraph 4). That’s when it hit me: Lawrence had an extremely pushy character. Seriously, go spend time with your real family and give your girlfriend some space! You’re not even supposed to have a girlfriend–you’re destroying your family!
However, there is one point that I would like to make, and that’s to say that Lawrence was looking out for Sarah. I do think that he didn’t have to take everything into extreme measures, like actually threatening to deport Little Bee until she threatened him too. To be honest, I was also really against Sarah having Little Bee stay here in the long term–I mean, Sarah has a kid and nobody will take care of Batman if she’s fined and in jail while Little Bee is being flown back to Nigeria. Even if Sarah wants closure, she does need to think about safety too. Getting back to the topic, I would totally agree with you that Lawrence really needs to loosen up and take it down a notch.
I have a few questions in the end: how do you think Sarah would react if Lawrence really deported Little Bee and why? Also, how would you deal with the situation if you were Sarah? I loved your post, bye!
~ Jing Jing (: