Content Warning: Both the novel and this guide reference alcohol and substance addiction, sexual assault, suicide, imperialism, and wartime violence.

Oil on Water explores what it means to be human in a turbulent world controlled by faceless oligarchy. In Chapter 7, Rufus and Zaq hire a guide who is physically imposing and armed, yet this ultimately does no good. In Chapter 20, when Salomon talks about how the kidnapping transpired, he reveals that Jamabo, for all his attitude and toughness, was killed coldly by a character who could easily overpower him. Many of the conflicts in the novel show how quickly chaotic and dangerous forces can reveal order and safety to be an illusion. Lives are often taken without a second thought, and villages are destroyed or abandoned. Military forces that are supposed to be protective of the people in the region are anything but, instead perpetrating violence, keeping citizens from traveling freely, and in some cases torturing prisoners. In much the same way, the militants say that they represent the people of Nigeria in their stand against the oil industry, but they too bring chaos to the islands, causing havoc with their illegal actions, kidnapping innocent people, and shooting anyone they believe to be against them.