Freedom

Through both the political dynamics in Nawa, and the behavioral dynamics in Sidi's beehives, the author explores the relativity of freedom. In Chapter 3, a visiting "electoral caravan" informs the Nawa villagers that they are no longer under the rule of the Handsome one, and are now free to choose their own leader (17). Though the news is positive, the villagers are unsure how to respond. The narrator says that "most of them hadn't even chosen their spouses, and now they were meant to choose who would govern them" (18). Because the village is situated so far outside the rest of the kingdom, its inhabitants have had little reason to concern themselves with the nation's political affairs. Both under the rule of the Old One and the Handsome One, the Nawis' affairs were disregarded. The narrator says that "in their isolation, they had started to believe that they were...