Modeled after the Statue of Liberty, the Goddess of Democracy stands with the students in Tiananmen Square. The students gather around this emblem of open government that they have created. The students situate the statue in such a way that her gaze is directly fixed on the square’s likeness of Mao.

At the start of the book, Alex is a bit exasperated by his father’s fascination with his camera. It is just a gadget, a high-tech toy, in Alex’s opinion. He often sees his father’s obsession with always getting the story and gaining the new shot as foolhardy. His feelings change when he himself begins to rely on a camera to tell a truth that the world needs to see. Imitating his father, he pulls out the camera during the massacre and begins getting footage of the carnage. Alex knows both how valuable and how dangerous this footage is. He promises the students who rescued him that he will make sure the world sees the images he’s captured of the Chinese government gunning down defenseless protesters.