Bite of the Mango

One theme that was represented in the book,"The Bite of The Mango," by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland is surival. In the story a girl named Mariatu is walking around in the woods, when all of a sudden gets ambushed by a group of rebels. She gets beat up and cut, and falls to the ground. A man sees her and runs tward her. "The man bent down and picked up a mango(Kamara and McClelland pp.48). He passed it to me, and when I didn't raise my arms to receive the fruit, he looked down and saw the bloodied fabric," her hands had been cut off(Kamara and McClelland pp.48). This theme represents how hard life could be and how hard it may be to survive. This symbol of the mango tree and a girl sitting next to it resembles the scene in the book where her hands were cut off, and how she needed medical treatment right away.

A theme that was represented in the book,"The Bite of The Mango," by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland is courage. A girl named Mariatu is forced to leave the area in which she has grown up in to retreive medical attention. She is also faced with having to relocate due to vigorous acts performed by rebels, such as burning down her village. Therefor, she gets on a boat and travels away to the capital to retrieve help and find a place to live. "Fatmata led me to the pam-pam, a boat similar to the long wooden canoe men used in Magborouto fish(Kamara and McClelland pp.61). I spied a few other pam-pams in the water, sunk down with only their helms sticking out, we were the last on board," shows how Mariatu had the courage to move somewhere distant after living in an area she has lived in her whole life(Kamara and McClelland pp.61). This theme expresses how people are able to do something that will or would be very hard on them, and have the ability to conquer it anyway.

A theme that was represented in the book,"The Bite of The Mango," by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland is war. In the story a group of rebels are