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Themes
What You Give Is What You Get
A belief system that Robin adopts by the end of the book is karma, the idea that life rewards or punishes people based on their previous actions. This belief system helps her take responsibility for her actions and believe that she can make things right.
Victor first introduces this concept after Johan is hit in the head by a brick someone threw in the window. They can’t go to the police, so they find solace in the fact that “when you do bad things to people and don’t get punished for it, justice will still prevail because bad things will then happen to you in return” (280). When one doesn’t want to inflict revenge, karma offers a belief system that requires no intervention from the victim but still results in justice. In her own way, Beauty believes this too. She’s committed to her belief that violence won’t improve their lives because “violence begets more violence” (96). When Robin hears that karma is a possible explanation as to how the world works, she hopes it’s true.
Later, karma urges Robin to take responsibility for her actions. As she visits Victor in the hospital, it strikes her that she’s being punished for the bad things she has done. She realizes that she hurt the people she loves because she prioritizes her wants over theirs: ”Knowing full well that all Beauty wanted was to find her daughter, I’d made sure that wouldn’t happen” (364). Not only does Beauty have a heart attack, but Victor is also in the hospital after surviving a beating, and Robin loses her mother’s mascara, the only thing tying her to her parents. The evidence for Robin’s mistakes is mounting, and she can no longer deny it. In that moment, she hopes that the logic applies in the other direction and that “[her] fixing it will make it all better” (364).
As Robin tries desperately to make things right, it’s the random acts of kindness from the beginning of Beauty and Robin’s stories that let her succeed. When Robin asks why the boy from the shebeen wants to help her, he says that “Beauty was kind to [his] brother” (396). Robin has always wanted to be a detective, gathering clues and evidence, and her findings are now overwhelming. When someone does bad things, bad things happen to them, and the same goes for good things.
The Importance of Facing Pain and Fear
Robin and Edith both run from their pain and responsibilities for weeks after they hear the news of Robin’s parents’ murder. Later, Robin wants to run from change because she feared it so much. After desperately trying to run, they’re forced in each instance to face their pain whether they chose to or not.
In the immediate aftermath of her parent’s death, Robin decides that “being distracted would be a whole lot easier than being brave” (76), and Edith encourages it: “She had no clue how to console a grieving child. She didn’t even know how to deal with her own feelings of pain and loss, as her whole life had always been structured around the pursuit of pleasure” (76). Edith, bolstered by her job as a flight attendant, has always fled at the first sight of conflict. When faced with grief, she starts drinking. When forced to stop drinking, she begins to leave for work again for weeks at a time.
Robin holds her emotions in for 41 days after her parents die, thinking that crying is a weakness and her parents would be disappointed in her. Maggie explains that her tears, when they do come, “come from a place of deep, deep love” (197). In facing her pain, even though she does so against her will in that moment, she begins the course of events that brings Beauty into her life. When Beauty is present, Robin still pushes her feelings of fear onto Cat until Beauty helps her face the truth: that Cat, with her fears and her tears, is a part of her. After facing this truth, Robin notes, “I felt complete, like I was finally, finally enough” (244). In order to get to this feeling of fullness, Robin must face a truth she has been ignoring for many years. Beauty’s experience with grief has forced her to see that running from pain won’t make it go away: “The trick is to stop trying to escape and, instead, to make yourself at home” (263).
In an act of selfish desperation, Robin chooses not to tell Beauty that Nomsa wants to meet her in the park. She’s terrified that Beauty will leave if she finds Nomsa and convinces herself that she needs Beauty more. When her plan unravels, she realizes how much she hurt Beauty, finds Nomsa, and reflects that “in trying to outrun my fears […] I’d manifested them; it was in trying to keep Beauty that I’d lost her, and it was in trying to hold on that I was now forced to let go” (413-14). In refusing the truth that Beauty would one day leave her, Robin expedited that truth, hurting the very person she was trying to love and be loved by. Robin learns that facing her pain and fears results in positive outcomes. Tears are a form of love, fear is a form of bravery, and truth is vital for love to exist.
The Value of Bearing Witness
A recurring truth for several different characters is the importance of bearing witness. Beauty is driven by this belief, as is Morrie in his photography.
When the novel introduces Beauty, she’s preparing to leave her hut in Transkei and explains the open architecture by saying, “[My people] bear witness to each other’s lives and take comfort in having our own lives seen” and then asking, “What greater gift can you give another than to say: I see you, I hear you, and you are not alone?” (12). Beauty finds value in connection between people.
Beauty arrives in Soweto in time to witness the student uprising but not in time to find Nomsa. Instead, when she awakes from the tear gas, she goes to each child, holding their hands and comforting them. She “asks names and bears witness” (42). She records their names and what she learns: “Goodness. Her lips tremble and her tears are hot against my skin but she still manages a smile” (42). Beauty sees witnessing and recording the truth as essential, even if it’s painful to bear.
Morrie’s hobby is to take photos of things that are traditionally viewed as ugly: a trash can, a dead bug, old shoes, a broken radio. Robin never comes to understand his craft, but he says he does it because his grandfather said that “the world is a cruel place and it’s our job to record its ugliness” (118). Morrie has inherited a responsibility from his grandfather to bear witness to the ugliness of the world. In the same way that Beauty refuses to look away from pain and ugliness, Morrie immortalizes it.
In Maggie’s secret room where she and Beauty discuss Nomsa’s whereabouts, the wall is covered with books and photographs. Beauty marvels at the photographs, and when Maggie shows her one of Nelson Mandela, Beauty doesn’t recognize him, because his image is banned. By banning books and images, the government itself acknowledges the power of bearing witness. They acknowledge the power of what connection can do for people.
In the novel’s final scene, Robin delivers Nomsa to the hospital to visit Beauty and then watches them speak as she stands outside a window. Beauty cared for Robin for over a year, watching her, listening to her, and—as no other adult in Robin’s life can claim—simply being there. Robin wishes she could tell Beauty how much she loves her, but in seeing Nomsa and Beauty speak to each other she gives Beauty the gift of bearing witness.
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