A Wish in the Dark

59 pages • 1 hour read

A Wish in the Dark

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-10

Chapters 11-17

Chapters 18-26

Chapters 27-36

Chapters 37-49

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 37-49Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 37 Summary

Without Ampai, the people of the Mud House believe they are powerless against the Governor and want to cancel the march. Pong is shocked to hear even Somkit, who is lost in his grief for Ampai, agree. Pong encourages Somkit to share with everyone Ampai’s plan for the gold orbs. Once Somkit does, the people are inspired anew and donate all their faded orbs to replace the ones lost in the fire. The march will proceed as planned; the people will demonstrate to the Governor and to themselves that they can provide their own light.

Chapter 38 Summary

Somkit gives Pong a border permit and convinces him that he must leave while the police are distracted by the march; if they catch him, he will go to jail for the rest of his life. Pong, feeling guilty, apologizes to Somkit for leaving him behind at Namwon all those years ago; to Pong’s shock, Somkit reveals that he engineered the entire situation. Back then, Pong was so despondent that Somkit thought his friend would die unless he got out, so he planned Pong’s escape. However, Somkit regrets it now, because he feels that his actions condemned Pong to a lifetime of running. Ironically, both boys harbored deep guilt over Pong’s escape from Namwon, and both felt that they wronged the other. Pong and Somkit forgive each other before Pong departs.

Chapter 39 Summary

Nok learns that the Governor implicated Ampai as the arsonist of the Mud House fire and plans to use that as justification for his new law criminalizing peaceful protest. Nok realizes that the Governor must have arranged Ampai’s death, and she hurries to warn the marchers.

Chapter 40 Summary

Pong has a vision of Father Cham’s past. In the vision, Pong sees the Governor, who was once a monk in training, receive a special blessing from Father Cham: “May you bring the light back to Chattana” (319). Because Father Cham’s blessing granted the Governor the power by which he subjugated Chattana, Father Cham felt responsible and reverted to giving people small blessings. When the vision ends, Pong reflects that now it’s time for him to fulfill his own blessing: to find what he is looking for. He realizes that he was mistaken about the object of his search. Pong always visualized freedom as an ideal place where he could escape the darkness forever, but after learning the Governor’s history, he realizes that darkness is everywhere. One cannot run from it; they can only face it. What matters most is one’s ability to “shine a light” (324).

Chapter 41 Summary

Nok runs to the Giant’s Bridge, where she finds her father. She confesses the revelation of her true parentage and cries that she is no longer perfect and, therefore, no longer good. Nok’s father reassures her and apologizes for keeping the secret of her birth from her, but he tells Nok that her mother was a good woman, not a criminal—she was starving, and she stole to survive. Nok’s father complies with the Governor because he is afraid of him; according to Nok’s father, they are all trapped by the rules they live by. The Governor asked Nok’s father to change the laws in order to outlaw peaceful protest, but Nok’s father refused and was fired. Although her father implores her to stay away from the violence of the march, Nok disobeys and runs into the crowd.

Chapter 42 Summary

Pong understands that the Governor’s words about the inevitability of darkness are a method of control meant to force others to filter right and wrong through the lenses of crime and punishment. He sees past those words now and believes in his own innate goodness. Pong sets his course back for Chattana, mustering his courage to confront the Governor.

Chapter 43 Summary

Nok warns Somkit of the Governor’s plans, but Somkit won’t abandon the cause. Nok is frightened of the Governor and the lengths to which he’ll go to maintain power. The sudden smell of tangerine quells Nok and Somkit’s worries. The Governor arrives as the march begins.

Chapter 44 Summary

Pong seeks help from Officer Manit after using his prison tattoo to get the police’s attention. After explaining the danger threatening the marchers to Manit, Pong persuades the police officer to take him to the Giant’s Bridge.

Chapter 45 Summary

The Governor declares the march illegal. As the Governor utters his oft-repeated words, “The law is the light, and the light shines on the worthy” (352), Nok realizes how empty and wrong that sentiment is. Just as Nok learned in spire fighting, everyone contains a light inside of them. When the Governor decries the marchers as a band of criminals and beggars with whom no “worthy” (i.e., upper-class) person would stand, Nok pushes to the front of the crowd and boldly declares herself allied with the marchers. She uses her spire-fighting staff to send out a powerful wave of light. To prove that the people cannot live without him, the Governor extinguishes all the lights in Chattana.

Chapter 46 Summary

Pong climbs onto the bridge just in time to see the Governor recall all the lights into a blindingly bright gold orb that the Governor cups in his hands. He roars that the people do not deserve his light. Pong feels hopeless against him until he notices the red blessing cord on the Governor’s wrist. Realizing that without the cord the Governor will lose his powers, Pong rushes at him, aiming for his wrist.

Chapter 47 Summary

As Pong rips the Governor’s bracelet away, the gold light flows directly into Pong’s arm, leaking out of the lines of his prison tattoo. Somkit and Nok place their hands on Pong, and the light flows through their tattoos as well. The other marchers on the bridge join hands and share in this light. They all stand illuminated, everyone laughing as they all hold the light together. Pong tells the Governor that the light doesn’t belong to him (363), and the Governor, cold with fury, hurls Pong over the side of the bridge.

Chapter 48 Summary

Nok rescues Pong from the water below and resuscitates him. Everyone cheers when Pong revives, and as Pong looks into Nok’s black eyes, he thinks her smile is the brightest of all the lights he’s ever seen.

Chapter 49 Summary

The Governor loses his powers and flees. The gold light fades, and afterward, Pong, Somkit, and all the other former prisoners find that their tattoos completely vanished. With the Governor gone, Chattana uncertainly remakes itself. Without his light orbs, the people must learn to use fire again. Pong considers the difficulties of having to move forward without someone in position to decide everything; he wonders whether freedom or security is better and whether the two are mutually exclusive.

The novel closes on a final reflective scene in the courtyard of Namwon Prison between Pong and Nok, wherein both characters muse over the changes that they brought about in their world. Nok apologizes for chasing Pong all those years ago and being so convinced that he was a criminal. She tells him that she asked her father to rename the Giant’s Bridge “The Bridge of Good Hearts” in honor of Pong. He doesn’t quite know how to respond. He reflexively reaches for his left wrist and remembers how the bracelets he received from Father Cham all snapped after he was thrown from the bridge. At first, Pong is despondent over their loss, but then he considers that it might actually be a good thing: It means the blessings all came true. Pong directs Nok to stand under the mango tree in Namwon’s courtyard so that she can catch a perfectly ripe fruit; he promises her that it’s “going to be a really good one” (375).

Chapters 37-49 Analysis

Chapters 37-46 develop the final rising action of the novel before the climax in Chapter 47. Nok’s and Pong’s character arcs also reach their climaxes when they each have their defining realizations in Chapter 40 and Chapter 41, respectively. As Pong’s conflict over his redemption resolves, Nok’s conflict over her worthiness does as well. The novel’s overall conflict against the Governor concludes as the two defeat him together.

Pong finds himself pushed into a leadership role, and his perspective on affecting change develops after Ampai’s death. Although Pong confessed to Ampai in Chapter 28 that he doesn’t think broken things can be fixed, in Chapter 37 Pong ironically finds himself the voice of hope when the other protestors (including the usually cheerful Somkit) want to cancel the march. Pong convinces them that they can stop the Governor with their gold lights. This foreshadows Pong’s leadership role in the revolution and at the climax, as well as his internal shift to recognizing his own agency and capacity to do good.

Chapter 40 provides a climax to Pong’s character arc and a succinct encapsulation of the Redemption and the Light Within and Freedom from Darkness themes. Throughout the novel, Pong seeks an escape from the darkness imposed on him by the Governor. Like the rest of Chattana, Pong fell into the trap of granting the Governor godlike status, but witnessing the Governor’s history in Father Cham’s vision in Chapter 40 allows Pong to realize that the Governor is human and fallible, too. Light is not a special, metaphysical force signifying worth; it is a natural phenomenon that can be twisted into a tool of control like any other. This realization catalyzes Pong’s taking up his own agency; he negates the negative characterization he allowed darkness to give him, helping him release his guilt and perceived helplessness. Pong’s realization that all that matters is one’s ability to “shine a light” (324) to get through the darkness encapsulates the narrative’s thematic statement on redemption. Through Pong, the narrative suggests that all people have the ability to grant themselves forgiveness for past wrongdoings and to choose to effect positive change in the world through accepting darkness and embracing the potential for good.

Nok’s conversation with her father in Chapter 41 is the climax of her character arc. Nok casts off all her illusions about perfection; the effect societal prejudice has on her is clear as she sobs that she isn’t perfect and, therefore, isn’t good. Nok’s father helps her understand that neither her birth nor her mother’s actions dictate Nok’s goodness. The conversation with her father motivates her to be heroic in the final pages of the novel. Through Nok, the narrative suggests that one can adapt their perspective and that, as Father Cham said, the desperate deserve compassion, not judgment (68). Nok’s transformation communicates the Laws versus Justice theme as she learns that goodness and compassion transcend law.

At the novel’s climax in Chapter 47, the light orbs symbolically conclude the theme of Redemption and the Light Within. Just as Pong learned that one need not seek forgiveness from external sources, he also learns that each person has the ability to shine their own light. The citizens of Chattana prove to themselves that they don’t need to rely on the Governor for their light; they have the ability to create it themselves. Part of the Governor’s oppression was built upon convincing them otherwise. Reclaiming the power to create light for themselves reflects Pong’s journey to accept the darkness within himself and grant himself redemption. This communicates the Freedom from Darkness theme as well: While Pong learns that freedom from literal and personal darkness is impossible, he learns that the true force of darkness is the oppressive societal forces that keep citizens in unequal systems. Freedom from darkness ultimately means embracing one’s ability to create positive change.

The symbolism of the prison tattoos’ disappearance reinforces this. For Pong, the tattoo represents his dark past; for Somkit, the societal prejudices that keep him from following his dreams; and for Nok, her secret shame. The light they hold together symbolizes the light they find within and create together, and it is this force that erases the prison tattoos. The narrative suggests through this collaborative action that individual and collective forces of good have the power to generate positive change by removing societal prejudices and the shame they ingrain in the individual.

The novel’s resolution occurs in Chapters 48 and 49. In Chapter 48, the reader learns that Pong survived; Chapter 49 depicts Chattana post-Governor and provides hopeful insights into the city’s resulting progress. Pong’s and Nok’s foil and parallel arcs come full circle in the novel’s final scene in Namwon’s courtyard. Both characters learned to let go of ingrained prejudice: Pong so that he could see the goodness in his own heart and Nok so that she could learn that worthiness is inherent, not earned. Nok and her father’s renaming the bridge “The Bridge of Good Hearts” symbolizes the characters’ respective journeys. Nok learned to recognize goodness in others; Pong learned to recognize it in himself.

The novel’s final moment recalls the symbolism of the mango in Chapter 1. There, the mango symbolized the inaccessible freedom and justice that taunted Pong from inside the prison; now, having transformed that prior setting into a hopeful microcosm of future progress to come, Pong reaches up to pluck the mango and offer it to Nok, demonstrating that now Pong has access to what he deserves. Justice is freely available to him, and he offers it to others now. This ends the novel on an optimistic tone evocative of the better things that lie ahead for the characters.