Remembering the Rwandan genocide
The scariest part of the Rwandan genocide is that for the most part, it happened without many people knowing about it, and those who did know didn't care, and those who did care didn't know how to help. The horrors of that genocide were not unlike the Holocaust, and for that, the Nazi's stood trial in Nuremburg, famously, but the world did not rally for justice in Rwanda, proving that planet earth is still not free from ethnic genocide and racial hatred. For those reasons, Kidder argues that we ought to consider the Rwandan genocide as objectively as we can—which in this case means learning about the ways those events affected real people, Deo specifically.
Each human life matters
Instead of having to learn about specific people and their specific tragedies, Kidder tries to broaden the scope of the story as a reminder to the reader that there were 800,000 Rwandans who did not escape the genocide. Often, the number of deaths feels inaccessible, so that's why the specific example of Deo's life is helpful—it helps us to remember that 800,000 Rwandans really died, people just like Deo, pretty much everyone he knew.
Non-violence and love
Ultimately, the core theme of the book is that not only is genocide evil, any kind of violence or hatred is evil. The genocide itself is a reminder that public opinion and political opinion can quickly devolve into in-fighting and finger-pointing, which when fully grown can turn into violence and hatred. This book demonstrates a picture of love—sharing our stories with one another and helping each other to work through these difficult lives.
