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 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
In the refugee hospital, Arn finds out that it is March 1979 and that he has been away from home for four years. He is now fifteen years old.
Americans come to visit the hospital, including the First Lady, Rosalynn Carter. One of these Americans, Peter Pond, begins helping Arn, sitting by his bed and sneaking him medicine and candy. In broken Khmer, Peter tells Arn that when Arn gets better, he will take him to America. Peter burns Arn’s old clothes and cries at how stiff they are with blood, dirt and the smell of death.
One day, Arn sneaks out of the children’s center to find his family. He envies the families he sees playing and cooking together. He sees someone he recognizes from his old town but with horror he realizes it is a Khmer Rouge soldier in civilian clothes. There are former Khmer Rouge soldiers all around, “like whole new Year Zero […] Where even the killer can get food and tent and live right next to regular family” (167).
Mr. Pond sneaks Arn and two of his friends out of the camp to an American party and gives them American picture books to help them learn English. After getting shot in the leg by a guard for sneaking between the camps, Mr. Pond tells Arn he will take him and his two refugee friends, Sojeat and Ravi, to America.
Chapter 14 Summary
Arn is excited to go to America but upset that he can’t take the rest of the children in the refugee camp with him. Arn feels especially bad for a small boy called Runty, whom he treats like a little brother. Sojeat and Ravi learn English well, but Arn draws pictures of how he imagines his new life in America: “Airplane. Peter Pond Mercedes. Eight-track cassette player. Big Bowl of fish-head stew, big pile of fry ants and Chuckle candy every day” (175).
Arn has become the most popular kid at the camp for his skill at playing volleyball. One day, he jumps over the fence to the adult camp to fetch the ball and hears a voice call out to him: “Little fish…is that you?” (177). Sombo’s voice jolts his mind back to his time with the Khmer Rouge, when he pushed bodies into mass graves and killed in cold blood. Again, Arn feels guilty about being chosen to go to America even though he has done so many bad things. On his last night in the camp, Arn, Sojeat, and Ravi give away the candy and clothes Peter Pond sent them. Arn looks for Sombo again but never finds him.
Chapter 15 Summary
The boys fly from Bangkok to New York, where Peter Pond meets them at the airport. He takes them to eat at McDonald’s but Arn hates the food and is disappointed that they do not have rice.
At Peter’s house in New Hampshire, Arn, Sojeat, and Ravi are put in one large bedroom. Arn loves the big house and soft, fluffy bed. Late at night, when the boys won’t settle down, Peter comes in and yells at them. Arn is scared and wonders if it was a mistake to come to the U.S. Peter gets the boys new clothes at the mall but yells at them again when they think everything is free. Arn doesn’t understand the rules in America: people give him things for free but when he takes them himself, he gets in trouble.
Peter takes Arn, Sojeat, and Ravi to a gathering of white people and asks them to read from a speech he has written. Arn doesn’t understand English very well, but Sojeat and Ravi are shy so Arn takes the microphone: “I hold the microphone like I see Elvis do, like the Beatle, and I say something from the paper Peter give us. I say I am happy to be here in the United State” (188). He loves the applause from the crowd and realizes that after only two days in the U.S., he has become “a little bit famous” (188).
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
The juxtaposition of Arn’s wartime mentality and the safety of the refugee camp foreshadow his difficulty transitioning back to normal life, even after he has gotten away from the Khmer Rouge. Arn sees other children in the refugee camp playing and he cannot understand how they are so carefree. Arn spent four years with the Khmer Rouge. This moment brings us full circle, to of a scene in the first chapter, when Arn kicks a soccer ball with a group of child soldiers and “they play with frown face, no fun, always keeping gun on the shoulder” (11). The next moment, a soldier knocks a kid off of his motorcycle with his gun, killing him, because the kid wants to ride it. Arn, who is still in his hometown, cannot understand this.
When Peter Pond promises to take Arn, Sojeat, and Ravi to America, Arn doesn’t understand why he is given this opportunity. He is still wracked with guilt about his uncanny luck despite the atrocities he has committed. Peter tells him he is the “chosen one” (161). Even though Arn does not understand what that means, he regains his sense of hope, starts to learn English, and dreams about America.
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