So over the weekend I was doing the reading for Little Bee and brainstorming different ideas as the focus of my paper. I’m trying to write about a minor character that seems to be one dimensional, but after a deeper analysis reveals a more rich and vivid meaning to the work. The character that sticks out most to me in this regard is Charlie or Batman. I feel that the role of Batman is more than a personification of concealment or facades. In my opinion, the role of Batman is to provide the reader with this child-like idea of justice. Charlie is able to organize his world around a basic concept: “Are you a goodie or a badie”. The audience uses Charlie’s simplistic outlook on justice to re-evaluate the decisions of the other characters.
If you’re a badie then you must be stopped at all costs, but if you’re a goodie then one must do all in their power to help you. This virgin presentation of justice starkly contradicts the decisions and situations of the other characters: Why would a young girl be held in prison for two years when she has not committed a crime? Why would someone watch a person kill themselves as a form of revenge? I guess I’m approaching this in the psychological school of thought. It seems like Cleave is trying to show us how our morals can start out either black and white but with age fall into this cloud of gray. I get the sense that Cleave is instructing the reader not to have a gray interpretation of justice.
Some would argue that this idea isn’t valid, because Charlie (a goodie) plays a naughty trick on Little Bee so that he can watch television before breakfast. I would argue that it wasn’t Charlie would played the trick, but Batman instead. Batman is a morally ambiguous character so he is able to tread the boundaries of good and evil while maintaining a strict view of justice.
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