Coming of Age
The main theme of the novel is Jim’s journey towards maturity with World War II as his backdrop and catalyst. He is separated from his parents when the hostilities begin and a significant portion of the book is spent trying to find them. The experience of having suddenly been torn away from his comfort zone--his wealthy parents, his luxurious, comfortable lifestyle in Shanghai--teaches him about the brutal realities of war, human nature, and ultimately himself in ways that no teacher could have. He learns courage, self-determination, and resourcefulness when he is forced to live as all the POW’s do: faced with the constant threat of death through violence and starvation.
Vilification of War
Jim, the main character and narrator of the novel, is a young boy whose reports of the war are relatively untainted by adult propaganda or nationalistic inclinations. He recounts the apparent silliness of each aggressor side: he reports the arrogance displayed by British colonial forces towards the Chinese, then the indiscriminate violence inflicted by the Chinese soldiers later on directed towards everyone it seems, peasant and soldier alike. He describes what he considers to be the ridiculous notion of honor in victory and defeat espoused by the Japanese soldiers. Unlike many novels that glorify war as a noble endeavor and a holy duty the novel removes all the gloss by narrating events from the point of view of a young child. The truth is loud and clear: war is stupid. There is no such thing as a “right side” and ultimately it is the common person who ends up paying the steepest price for the squabbling of a handful of powers-that-be.
Loyalty
Loyalty to one’s nation is a theme that frequently pops up in the novel; or rather loyalty to one’s nation is tested in the novel. Jim is an interesting study in this theme. Oddly, Jim identifies more with the Japanese Air Force as they actually played an integral part in the formation of his concept of group solidarity and a sense of patriotic duty. During his time in a POW camp Jim observes the other British prisoners and sees that they complained the most and did little to help one another while detained--even for fellow British detainees. Jim himself is a victim of British indifference; when he develops pneumonia none of the other British prisoners help him, seemingly content to wait for him to die. The Japanese on the other hand display an almost fanatical devotion to their country and do all they can in support of it. This ideal seems nobler and more appealing to a young, impressionable mind and as such he even toys with the idea of signing up for Japanese Air Force.
Death and Humanity
In vilifying war as an ultimately futile, stupid endeavor it also puts forth another theme: the sanctity, or as in many cases, how life is treated as being rather cheap and trivial. Life is cheap, the novel posits. Soldiers are conscripted against their will; young men are cut off at the prime of their lives, and when the fighting starts the military aren’t the ones that pay for it the most--it is the civilian population that is most badly hit and deeply affected--women, children, the elderly, all of them cannon fodder for a war that none of them signed up for or even wanted.
Alienation and Loneliness
Jim also learns to live with the isolation of having been separated from his family, often with his imagination as his only coping mechanism. He passes the time and fights his loneliness by fantasizing about being a Japanese fighter pilot. When he is placed in a POW camp he tries to ease his alienation by trying to build ties with his fellow prisoners, treating them almost like a surrogate family. In doing this is Jim creates his “new normal”, his means of feeling safe and his means of making sense of a world gone mad.
