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.
Symbols & Motifs
Rice
Rice is one of the main symbols in the novel. It is a staple of the Cambodian diet and a large part of Cambodia’s economy. The Khmer Rouge tried to dramatically increase the country’s rice production through forced labor, causing widespread death and starvation. Their failure to cultivate rice throughout the novel foreshadows the failure of their political movement.
The abundance or lack of rice mirrors Arn’s complex journey. After the Khmer Rouge strip the workers of their possessions and dress them in black, the Khmer Rouge throw the workers a feast: “Rice and fish, soup with lemongrass and morning glory” (31). The next day, however, Arn and his family are sent to work in the rice fields and rice becomes rationed. When the first harvest is successful, Arn thinks they will eat well again, but he sees trucks come and take entire harvest away. At the children’s labor camp, Arn is served thin rice gruel once a day. Arn steals a handful of uncooked rice from the kitchen when the guards are not looking and shares it with his friends; they eat it grain by grain. During the war, rice and a cooking pot are the only supplies the troops take with them, aside from their weapons.
When Arn arrives in the United States, the first thing he attempts to order at McDonald’s is rice. Every night at Peter Pond’s house, they have a big rice dinner and it is one of the only things that makes Arn feel at home. As a symbolic food, rice provides nourishment and even a sense of community, but it is not enough to give a person’s life meaning. When Arn leaves the refugee camp, he wonders if the other children will only “Live forever in this place, think of rice, of volleyball, of more rice?” (174). He wants more for himself and for the children around him than a life that only focuses on surviving day-to-day. When Arn reaches the U.S., he often talks about having a full stomach, but this feeling alone does not bring him peace.
The Mango Grove
The mango grove is the site of a mass grave near Arn’s work camp. Arn first notices this pile when he arrives at the rice field with his family. It is a dirt-covered mound and it has a bad smell. During Arn’s time in the camps, the pile grows to a mountain, with limbs and bones sticking out of it. It is the Khmer Rouge’s main execution site, and “going to the mango grove” takes on sinister connotations.
Arn is forced to go to the mango grove with the soldiers to bury bodies. One night, Arn sees a child from his camp run to the mango grove. Arn follows him and finds him chewing on an arm that sticks out of the pile. The symbol is particularly disturbing because it contrasts the image of a mango grove, which brings to mind a tropical paradise, with the horror of a mass grave. Positioned near the child labor camp, it also symbolizes the horrors children are forced to endure during the Cambodian Genocide.
The Prince and Princess
Prince Sihanouk and Princess Monineath are the monarchs of Cambodia. When the Khmer Rouge invade Arn’s town, they falsely claim that the prince has returned as a way to suss out the government soldiers and kill them. This lie is the first of many the Khmer Rouge will tell in the novel, and their use of the people’s beloved symbol of their culture indicates that they will do whatever it takes to break the people’s spirit so that they conform to their will.
Arn thinks Princess Monineath is very beautiful and idealizes her like a celebrity. He carries a portrait of her with him to the work camp but must surrender it to the Khmer Rouge soldiers. For Arn, the prince and princess of Cambodia represent the opposite of Angka: real, living symbols of Cambodia’s history. They symbolize hope and rich culture that even the Khmer Rouge cannot erase.
The Jungle
The Cambodian jungle is hot, dense and full of predators; it represents the deepest regions of the human psyche. The further Arn goes into the jungle, the less chance he feels of making it out with his humanity intact. Every battle takes Arn further in, until his troop has lost all of its supplies and must sleep in the trees. There, he contends with leeches, vines, snakes, and tigers. The tree cover is so dense that no light gets through, even in the day; the air is hot, stagnant and dark. The terrifying terrain Arn navigates in the jungle mirrors the even more terrifying inner terrain that he is forced to explore.
The village Arn’s troop encounters in the jungle shows what could happen to Arn if he does not fight to make it out of the jungle; it would be very easy to die there. When Arn deserts his troop, he struggles to find a way out of the jungle, but after days of walking, he comes upon the slaughtered villagers and realizes he’s been walking in circles. This passage has great symbolic implications. At this point in the narrative, Arn is close to insanity and hallucinates that his dead family members are calling to him. His will to live prevails, and he envisions a white rabbit leading him out of the jungle, into a field, and across a river, to safety. When he gets to the edge of the jungle, he is hesitant to run out of the cover of darkness into the light. The choice to do so means that he does retain some of humanity and is willing to transcend the evils of the war.
America
Arn daydreams about America from the beginning of the novel. He and his little brother sneak into American movies and, later, act out the battles they view. They listen to rock ‘n’ roll and dance like Elvis. America is a place of big cars, beautiful women, cool airplanes, and Coca-Cola. Arn is depressed for most of his time in the refugee camps but when he finds out Peter Pond is going to take him to America, his whole outlook changes. When he arrives, though, he realizes that America is more complicated than it seems. He must adjust to new food, customs, and social realities. He must also adjust to being a brown child among a sea of white people. He is bullied in school and students taunt him with the racial slur “monkey.” Toward the end of the novel, Arn feels so lost in his new home that he contemplates suicide. Ultimately, America provides Arn with the sanctuary he needs to create a meaningful life, even though it is not the utopia he dreamed of as a child.
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