38 pages • 1 hour read
Patricia McCormickNever Fall Down
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Arn’s story begins in April 1975 in his hometown of Battambang, Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge Revolution has just begun. Arn is eleven years old and the story is told as a first-person narrative through his vernacular English.
Arn describes music floating in the streets, everything from Cambodian love songs to American rock ’n’ roll. Arn learns that government forces are fighting “bad guys” who aren’t even considered real soldiers: “Only peasant in black pajama. Not even with real boot. Sandal made from old tire” (5).
Arn has a younger brother, four sisters, and lives with his aunt. His family used to own the opera house until his father, the star performer, was killed. His mother could not support them and moved away, so his aunt took care of the children. Arn is a hustler, and he and his younger brother make money by singing in front of the movie palace and selling ice cream on the street.
One day, trucks roll into town carrying black-clad soldiers. The soldiers proclaim themselves Khmer Rouge, or Red Cambodia. At first, the people cheer, because their arrival means the civil war, which began in 1970, is over. Soon, however, the Khmer Rouge announce that everyone must evacuate the city. Arn is confused when he sees everyone walking, carrying their possessions while soldiers prod them with rifles. Arn and his family join the march although they don’t know where they are going.
Chapter 2 Summary
The sun is hot. People are exhausted, dropping food, clothing and other goods. Some children are left behind. People fall and the soldiers do not allow anyone to help them. If someone cries out the soldiers hit them with the butt of their rifle. As Arn walks, he sees dead bodies piling up on the side of the road: men and women, children, and whole families. He doesn’t know how to process what he is seeing but knows to keep his head down and not attract the soldiers’ attention.
At the end of the second day of marching, they stop and make camp. It is deep in the countryside, farther out of town than Arn has ever been. Soldiers take people away who are wealthy and educated. Men and women are separated into different groups and commanded to grow rice. The soldiers take the people’s remaining belongings, including their clothes, and burn them.
Every night, the Khmer Rouge hold a meeting in the camp. They proclaim that now everyone is equal—no more rich or poor. They do not need their possessions because “Angka will provide all that you need” (31). Arn hears this work, “Angka,” all the time now. He doesn’t know what it means, but he knows not to ask. Now everyone wears the same black shirt, pants and sandals. Arn sees a large, dirt-covered pile near the mango grove outside the camp. It has a bad smell and grows larger every day.
Chapter 3 Summary
After a few months, the Khmer Rouge march the children to a new forced-labor camp located in a former monastery. The head soldier informs them that important Khmer Rouge leaders will visit to see how well they work. Girls are separated from boys and each morning they all wake before dawn and work in the rice fields. When children get sick from poor diet and overwork, the soldiers call it “bad character” and “disease of the consciousness” (41). Arn is excited when they finally harvest the rice because he thinks that now they will have more food, but a truck comes and takes it away.
Arn volunteers to play the khim, a stringed instrument, in a children’s band that will perform Revolutionary songs for the visiting Khmer Rouge leaders. They only have a week to master their instruments; if they fail, they will be executed. At night, Arn must accompany soldiers to the mango grove and bury the newly executed prisoners. Even though he is sick with fear, Arn pushes the bodies into the ditch. The Khmer Rouge watches him to see how he reacts. “I make my eyes blank,” Arn says. “You show you care, you die. You show fear, you die. You show nothing, maybe you live” (53).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Cambodia had been in a state of civil war since 1970 when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in April 1975 and established it as Democratic Kampuchea. The prince and princess of Cambodia spent the civil war in exile with their communist allies, China and North Korea.
Arn’s story begins at the same time the Khmer Rouge take over the country. Black-clad soldiers rush into his town—and towns across Cambodia—and force the population into the countryside to grow rice as part of a national effort to create agrarian socialism. To evacuate the townspeople from their homes, the Khmer Rouge say that the Americans, who were allies of the deposed government, are going to bomb the country like they did in 1973, when they found out Cambodia’s government was supporting North Vietnam. McCormick does not weigh the narrative down with these political and historical details. Arn only mentions that he is glad the civil war is over, so the prince and princess can return from China, and that the Americans have no reason to bomb Cambodia because their war with Vietnam is over.
It is never explained in the book, but Angka, the mysterious leader of the Khmer Rouge, is not a real person. The Khmer Rouge government was run in complete secrecy from the rest of the country and Angka was created to represent a god-like communist ideal. Like the great and powerful Oz, Angka functioned to maintain control over the population for the men who were running the country from behind the curtain in the capital, Phnom Penh.
As an eleven-year-old narrator who strives daily to avoid violence and death, Arn’s focus is on his immediate situation, rather than the country’s politics. His narration is visceral and urgent. In the labor camp, he is worried because “All the kid have diarrhea now. With this diarrhea, you feel like you shit a hundred times each night […] You go to the latrine, and it’s crawling with maggot; just one board, very slippery, over a ditch also crawling with maggot. Some kid so weak, they fall in. I think they die too” (45-46).
The author incorporates just enough historical information into the novel for us to understand how Arn’s journey relates to what is happening in the country. The real focus is on how Arn survives the ever-escalating brutality of the Khmer Rouge and the moral conflicts he experiences as a result.
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