Detailed plot synopsis reviews of Behold the Dreamers |
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Even now he offers to help to try to help Jende stay in America, but Jende refuses his help. He has had enough.
They return to Cameroon... where they become instant millionaires. That's right, millionaires. The blackmail money plus what little they have saved is enough to make them millionaires in Cameroonian dollars. They can live like kings now. Jende, who said they would pretend not to have the blackmail money unless there was an emergency, has changed his mind: he wants to be rich!
When he gets back to Cameroon Jende plans to start a business where he will teach the wisdom of Wall Street. The wisdom he learned driving a car for someone and listening to him talk on the phone causes Jende to hold himself out as a financial genius, heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
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Literary Criticism:
This book was bad for three reasons:
1) Main characters unsympathetic. Jende and Nemi repeatedly represented themselves as virtuous, hardworking people when they were exactly the opposite. Jende lied and lied again to get into America and to stay there. Nemi blackmailed Cindy for $10,000 in cash. And yet both of them thought of themselves as virtuous, hardworking people who deserved to live in America and get rich. Their hypocrisy was astounding.
2) Very little plot. The plot can be summarized in one sentence--Jende comes to America, takes a menial job, then goes home. There was a lot that happened in the book that I didn't summarize. There were pages and pages and pages of Jende listening to one side of Edwards' phone conversations, which were not interesting at all. There were pages and pages of Nemi talking to her African friend about what a hard worker she was and how virtuous she was. There were pages and pages and pages about Jende and Nemi worrying they were going to be deported because Jende lied to get them into the country. None of that is very interesting.
3) Very little characterization. Most of the characters were two dimensional. Jende and Nemi were hardworking and virtuous, except when they were being devious and underhanded. We learned nothing about Edwards throughout the book except that he worked at Lehman Brothers and liked whores. The other characters--their family and friends, were even less well defined.
This could have been an interesting book. There were two ways it could have been done. First, Jende could have had a more interesting job. There is almost no way a story about a chauffeur can be interesting. But what if Jende had come to America to be something more exciting, like an entrepreneur? We could have seen his struggle to start and maintain his business, and personality conflicts with coworkers. That would have been more exciting than pages and pages of Jende listening to Edwards talk on the phone.
The other way it could have been interesting is if Jende had clashes with other people--friends, family, adversaries. But all the Africans in this book were cut from the same cloth--sensitive, hard working, and very boring. When you write a book about perfect people, don't be surprised if readers fall asleep.
