Internment

David embodies young idealism. He is a heroic freedom fighter who willingly risks his life to a cause that does not directly impact him. As a Jewish American, David is not a target of the government’s new directives. He could easily do what teachers at his school and his own parents advise him to do and sever ties with Layla. That he cannot do so defines his character.

Despite a father highly placed in the government who refuses to help, David relocates to a hotel outside the detention camp and appears daily in the crowd of protesters. Just seeing him outside the gates helps Layla maintain a sense of calm. He sneaks into the camp with Jake’s help and makes sure Layla’s writings get posted. But his love for Layla is not the only driving force in his commitment to bring national attention to the detention camp. Certainly, when David steals those precious minutes with Layla in the camp kitchen, their kisses are passionate and energetic. But their animated conversations reveal David’s respect for Layla’s intellect, her idealism, and her fiery self-confidence. Unlike the example of Layla’s own parents, in which a quiet and passive wife sustains the relationship, here is a partnership built on mutual admiration and trust. 

Although his love for Layla is at once genuine and tender, part of David’s character is defined by his own family: both his father’s and mother’s families were subjected to harsh government oppression, his father’s family in Nazi Germany and his mother’s in totalitarian Yemen. “Maybe politics and borders were supposed to keep us apart,” Layla decides, “but David and I built a safe space, a nest where our differences brought us together” (9). In this, the relationship between David and Layla represents the novel’s best offer of optimism: a world of shared differences, tolerance, and compassion for others. 

Jake is at once the novel’s most complex character and ultimately its moral center. He understands that the camp and what it represents is illegal, immoral, and antithetical to the American way. He maintains a tricky double identity in the camp, appearing to follow orders yet aiding Layla in her campaign to upend camp operations and resist the twisted authority of the Director. This gives his character a depth Layla intuits from the first time she sees him at the train station during the chaos of the family’s relocation.

The key to Jake’s character is his tattoo of a compass. As he explains to Layla, a compass cannot tell a person where they need to go or even where they are. It can only give a person the confidence to go where they want to go. As this metaphor reveals, Jake determines his own path. Though deployed as a member of the National Guard, he refuses to abandon his sense of right and wrong. He carries Layla multiple times out of threatening crowds and ensures she gets back to her family’s trailer safely. He is instrumental in getting Layla’s writings out to David and arranges for David’s secret visits to the camp. There is a hint that perhaps Jake has a tender crush on Layla. That he opts not to burden Layla with his feelings further underscores his selflessness. In the end, Jake’s bold interference during Layla’s brutal interrogation stops the Director’s violent behavior and ensures the camp operations will be halted and the detainees freed.

His murder—dramatically taking the bullet shot intended for Layla—elevates Jake to the novel’s moral center. He emerges as a tragic figure laying down his life for a complex tangle of powerful emotions: political idealism, moral awareness, and selfless courage.