ORAL INDIVIDUAL

Introduction:
This extract belongs to the book Refugee Boy, written by Benjamin Zephaniah in 2002. It
tells the story of a mixed-race boy who is called Alem in England country what he thinks it's
a vacation with his father, but he ends up being left alone in England.

So in this particular extract, the characters that appears are Alan, Ruth and Mrs. Fitzgerald.
So Alem is an Ethiopian boy living in a foster family in London. Mrs. Fitzgerald is his foster
mother and Ruth is his foster sister. So we are presented with a conversation between the
three of them where Ruth is being rude to Alem, and she's being told off by her mother.

And the themes that I found in the extract are to start with cultural differences. In the
extract, it says there was not much for them to talk about. Ruth was into pop music. Allen
was in two books. Alan loved buildings, Ruth love clothes. So this shows the cultural
differences that distinguished Alan from Ruth. The Ethiopian culture from the English
culture.

Refugees is another thing that appears in this extract, and in the whole book here we can
see this is a stage of the life of a refugee living in a foster family, and the third theme is
tension because there's a constant suffocating atmosphere. It is shown in the extract where
it says and the tension was ever present. So this extract belongs to chapter eight of the
book when Alem is settling down to the foster family, and before this he was living in a
children's home, and after this he starts going to school.

I believe this extract is responsible to comprehend the difficulties a refugee has been living
in a family and we are presented with a common conversation in their day to day life that
shows us how Alem lives. It also shows the difficulties that Alem is going through in the
process of adapting.
I believe Mrs. Fitzgerald had a correct attitude in response to Ruth abrupt behavior because
she tells her off by saying, Ruth, you come back here now, why do you speak to Alan like
that? Have some manners. This shows how she's always kind to Alem and concerned about
him when she says, I'm sorry, sometimes she gets like this. It's nothing. Just ignore her to
calm Alem down.

Ruth is not nice to Adam, she says. So what? Her behavior is common of a girl of her age, a
teenager. I can somehow put myself into her shoes because she's an only child who
monopolizes her parents’ attention for her whole life. Now, she's having a complete
stranger having her parents’ attention. So she's probably jealous and it's hard to swallow
for a girl of her age. Alem doesn't deserve rudeness but despite this, his response is very
comprehensive. The cultural differences between the both of them are stabling a block for
Alem. I think I can relate to Alem’s situation in adapting to a new family because I also lived
here and that situation and I think he's very good at this.

So to sum up, this extract shows a perfectly common situation of a refugee's life, and it
shows you the other side of the coin how there are many tough moments in a refugee’s life.