The Boy in the Suitcase Literary Elements

Crime Fiction

Denmark, specifically Copenhagen, during the 21st century

The book is narrated in the third person omniscient. The narrator is unknown and impersonal, merely relating past or present events without comment.

The two authors write with a relatively unified voice. They focus on the suspense of the plot, often building tension where it would not normally present itself. The tone leads toward melodrama, but often resolves in intelligent parsing of emotions.

Nina is the protagonist, selflessly protecting the boy and attempting to reunite him with his mom. Jan is the antagonist who pays Jucas to retrieve the boy for him.

The main conflict is man vs. man. The boy is the victim of human trafficking, ripped from his mom by greedy, evil men who sell him to a wealthy, evil man. Nina saves him and spends the rest of the book protecting him from Jucas and Jan.

The climax occurs when Nina learns who Jan is and tracks down his home address. All the negotiating and threats that follow are implied when she finds the house.

Karin expresses her suspicion of Jan early on in the story, long before he sends her to the train station. She notices the mental instability of his wife and (correctly) infers that Jan is desperate to please her. She also understands that his immense wealth is incongruous with how much business he does. All of her suspicions are accurate foreshadowings of Jan's purchase of the boy on the black market in order to appease his insane wife.

The authors seriously understate the condition of the boy when Nina finds him. Laying crammed into this suitcase, drugged unconscious for days, he's not alright It's unfeasible that he would be physically capable of running across Denmark in the resulting drama.

Nina discovering the boy in the locker is a sort of reversal of the Baby Moses story. In Ancient Egypt, Pharoah ordered all the Hebrew boys to be killed so that the slaves would not outnumber the Egyptians. Fearing for his life, Moses' mother placed him in a basket and sent him down the river. By great fortune, Pharoah's daughter found him and adopted him as her own son, a royal prince. Although Sagita did not intend for her son to be in that locker, it did save his life. Nina becomes Pharoah's daughter who takes compassion as the boy and treats him as her own child, completely changing his life.

Nina's mental picture of Lithuania is bleak. She has had little contact with the country other than the internet, as she explains, "her ideas had run along the liens of Soviet concrete ghettos, TB-infected prisons, and a callous mafia." Though she's never been to Lithuania, she can conjure up these striking images of violence and illness.

In helping the boy, Nina leaves behind her own children. She gets so caught up in the mystery of his appearance that she completely neglects her family, leaving without so much as a word to her husband. Her maternal impulse leads her to focus her energy on a child that is not hers at the expense of the peace of mind of her own kids who don't know where she is.

Sagita and Jan's wife make a nice parallel. Both are unprepared for their motherhood for various reasons. In Sagita's case it's poverty and singleness. For Jan's wife it's her mental instability and her son's illness. Both are called upon to make incredible sacrifices to their children, but in the end they both lose their sons.

Metonymy shows up in the character of Jan. He is blamed for all the criminal deeds of the story, even though he is only responsible for part of the problem. Although he never told Jucas to use violent force to get the child back, he is held responsible along with Jucas for multiple murders committed in pursuit of the boy. He also is blamed for the kidnapping of the boy, but the human trafficking ring approached him with the offer. In fact the boy had already been taken by the time Jan decides to illegally purchase a child. He is also blamed for his corrupt business so that when all is said and done Jan is the only one forced to pay for all the crimes committed.

When Nina first finds the boy, she tries to calm him down. She buys him clothes and ice cream. As they're eating the ice cream, she plays around trying to get him to laugh. She pretends to bring the cone to life, attributing human attributes to the dessert.