Little Bee

LITTLE BEE
Chapter 2

In the novel “Little Bee”, Chapter 2 holds a lot of significant events. After reading this chapter, the death of Andrew O’Rourke stood as an attention-grabbing topic to me. Events surrounding his untimely death would allow me to begin piecing together the past of the main character, Little Bee. Also, it’s my belief that her shadowy past had developed much earlier than her incarceration at the “The Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre”. Five days prior to his death, Andrew received a mysterious phone call from Little Bee. Suspicions arose in me after he showed such distress from her call. Assuming that he would be the only person that could help her, and having nowhere else to go, Little Bee explained how she would come to visit with him and his family after her release from the Centre. Furious after hearing this, Andrew quickly “hung up” on her, cutting off her only connection to the outside world. After reading though this section of the chapter, confused me mainly because I automatically suspected Andrew would be the first to person to help Little Bee, since she was in possession of a considerable amount of his personal information. This made me feel as though there should have been some kind of friendship between the two of them. This situation really intrigued my mind, generally because I consider myself to be a very inquisitive person. While constantly envisioning throughout the passage, it was my opinion that Andrew committed suicide to hide certain dramatic dealings from his past, which was too devastating for him to have had revealed to his family or friends. His death led me to consider his mysterious dark past was connected somehow to the incarceration of Little Bee. I began asking myself the following important questions such as: Could Little Bee pose a threat to Andrew and his family? Upon further reading of the chapter, I realized that Little Bee would later attend the funeral of the man that had turned his back on her when she needed him the most. While doing this, she became a family support system by leading Andrew’s wife Sarah into the Church. Sarah would then describe the funeral as “a dream that might be awoken from with relatively little effort”. Mourning the death of her husband, I think Sarah has somehow separated herself from everything, as if she’s on the outside looking in. Wondering how she begins to explain Andrew’s death to their 4 year old son. Depression and guilt was her only conclusion to his death. Question Two: Why would one phone call from a harmless Little Bee drive this well-known publicist to end his life? Having no doubt in my mind now, Andrew played a major part in Little Bee’s past. All of these facts make the story so interesting to me. Andrew’s death affects the story because it was so abrupt.
Suspenseful is how I would describe reading this chapter. With the first thing being Andrew’s death raises a lot of questions that are sometimes hard to answer. By committing suicide to me Andrew is running away, or trying to cover up certain secrets from the past. These actions represent this character to me, as being afraid of the outcome of taking a chance on helping Little Bee. Andrew’s death was the “cliff hanger” of the story, allowing me to see the secrecy and lies that could possibly unfold later on in the story. By the end of this story I feel as though without the death of Andrew O’Rourke’s death Little Bee will never be able to tell her story.