67 pages • 2 hours read
Chloe GongOur Violent Ends
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A 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 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
January 1927
The New Year in Shanghai is celebratory since the “madness” has disappeared. Juliette Cai and her cousin, Kathleen Lang, are at the movie theater, spying on a merchant. Suddenly, Juliette spots Roma Montagov, the heir to the White Flowers. It’s the first time she’s seen him since the events at the end of These Violent Delights. In the meantime, the blood feud between the White Flowers and the Scarlet Gang has grown more active, with the Scarlet Gang seeking retribution for Roma shooting at Tyler Cai, Juliette’s cousin, and the White Flowers retaliating for Juliette’s apparent murder of Marshall Seo, whose survival is still secret. The gangs’ war is made tenser by the political forces of the Nationalists and Communists, who challenge the rule the gangs have long held over Shanghai.
Kathleen asks Juliette what happened between her and Roma, but Juliette won’t answer. Juliette thinks about how Roma has changed from a man who avoided violence to one who has embraced it. She blames herself for telling Roma everything between them was a lie, which, unbeknownst to Roma, she only did to protect him.
Juliette spots an assassin aim at the merchant but shoots him in the shoulder before he can fire his pistol. The sound of the gunshot is covered by the film’s soundtrack; only Roma hears it. He shoots as well, but at Juliette, not at the assassin. This time, the crowd hears and panics. Juliette chases Roma, who shoots at her again, missing on purpose. Juliette feels like she doesn’t recognize him anymore but still isn’t scared when he aims at her; she would rather be killed by Roma than be the reason he dies. Juliette gains the upper hand, and Roma tells her to kill him, but she knocks him out instead. She tells his unconscious form, “Even if you hate me, Roma Montagov, I still love you” (20).
Chapter 2 Summary
Roma is wakened by Dimitri Voronin, his rival for the heir of the White Flowers. Dimitri gloats that Kathleen, not Roma, spoke to the merchant, implying that Roma’s father should have sent Dimitri instead. The garde municipale arrives, ordering Dimitri to drop his weapon—in French, which Dimitri does not speak. Roma does, and he sends the guards away. Roma tells Dimitri not to come into a territory where he can’t speak the language. Roma inspects the place where Juliette cut him and is surprised to find that she bound the injury with silk from her dress.
Kathleen and Juliette wait for Lord Cai outside his office, while he speaks with a Nationalist (Kuomintang) leader. When they emerge, the Nationalist is demanding loyalty from the Scarlet Gang, a concept Juliette mocks. Lord Cai is shocked and demands that Juliette apologize, but the Nationalist, General Shu Yang of the Northern Expedition (the march of Nationalist troops north through China), is more measured. Lord Cai is determined to get the Scarlet Gang on the right side of the conflict before the Kuomintang arrives in Shanghai. Juliette states a preference for the excitement of typical gang violence.
Juliette and Kathleen report that they got a signed contract from the merchant they were pursuing, though a vague one. Lord Cai doesn’t know what the Kuomintang wants from the merchant, but they are looking for weapons. Juliette is shocked that her father trusts the Nationalists so much. Juliette tells him about the assassin, contradicting his assumption that it was a White Flower attack. She reluctantly admits that Roma was also there to speak with the merchant.
Juliette mysteriously refers to a letter. After Kathleen is sent away, Lord Cai confirms that they are being blackmailed by whoever has the rest of Paul Dexter’s monstrous insects. He is charging Lord Cai immense sums in exchange for not releasing them. (In Chapter 35, the blackmailer is revealed to be Dimitri Voronin.) Juliette advises him to send the money.
Meanwhile, Alisa Montagov eavesdrops on her father, Lord Montagov, who is also being blackmailed, and Dimitri. Lord Montagov refuses to pay because he believes Roma killed the monster. Dimitri reports that Lord Cai believes the threat, and Alisa wonders how Dimitri could know this. Alisa leaves her father’s office and encounters Benedikt Montagov, her cousin, who is suffering badly in his grief over Marshall’s presumed death. He snaps at Alisa, and Roma intervenes, but Benedikt doesn’t listen to Roma either. Alisa tells Roma what she overheard, but he dismisses her. When she sees that he is nervous, Alisa recognizes that Roma is not yet changed into someone hard like Dimitri.
Chapter 3 Summary
A man enters a White Flower club and transforms into a monster, shooting insects out of his body that spread the “madness,” which causes the infected to tear out their own throats. Unlike with the previous outbreak, however, the insects return to the monster after everyone in the club is dead. The “madness” is no longer contagious; it is controlled by whoever controls the monster.
The Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers receive identical notes that read, “Paul Dexter only had one monster. I have five. Do as I say, or everyone dies” (39).
Chapter 4 Summary
Word of the attack spreads through the city quickly, though everyone is surprised when the incident remains isolated. At home, Juliette sharpens her knives while Rosalind translates a business report for her father, who wishes to take Rosalind and Kathleen to live in the countryside. Juliette asks after Kathleen and notes the ongoing tension between the sisters.
Tyler enters, injured. He was in a skirmish with the White Flowers, and Juliette berates him for picking fights in the International Settlement, lest he give the Europeans ideas about “fixing” the feud by colonizing more of Shanghai. Tyler retorts that he isn’t afraid of foreigners. He tells Juliette she has a visitor: Walter Dexter, the father of Paul Dexter, who unleashed the original monster. Walter offers to sell Juliette the remains of Paul’s research for an enormous price. He insists he didn’t know about Paul’s work until after Paul was dead and tells Juliette he is heading back to England.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Despite the cheerful atmosphere in Shanghai, the first four chapters of Our Violent Ends depict a bleak series of events for the main characters following the more optimistic ending of These Violent Delights. These initial pages primarily demonstrate what has shifted between the ending of the last novel and the beginning of this one while setting up the central conflicts of Our Violent Ends: The new monsters and the increased influence that the political factions in Shanghai hold over the gangs.
Juliette’s false betrayal of Roma and her apparent murder of Marshall have led to the vicious antagonism between the protagonists and once-lovers. The blood feud has escalated, and the “new Larkspur” is blackmailing both gangs. Given that the White Flowers and Scarlet Gang disagree on virtually everything, it fits with the pattern of the series thus far that Lord Cai decides it is best to pay while Lord Montague refuses to do so. Though the somber atmosphere among the gang members contrasts with the celebrating civilians, the monster’s reappearance monster (and the reveal there are five monsters this time) quickly brings the same sense of impending disaster to the whole of Shanghai. The monsters in Our Violent Ends do not cause contagion in the same way that the singular monster in These Violent Delights did, but the spread of gossip throughout the city shows that the effects of fear and violence can spread even when contagion is not literal. Walter Dexter’s reappearance and attempt to sell Paul’s research also suggest that the aftereffects of violence live on, even after the perpetrator is dead.
These first chapters also introduce elements of secrecy and spycraft that continue throughout the novel. Alisa, who is too young to be a full member of the White Flowers, eavesdrops on Lord Montagov’s meeting with Dimitri, offering an “outsider” perspective that isn’t clouded by Dimitri’s treachery. Alisa rarely narrates in the book, but when she does, her perspective allows Chloe Gong to drop clues, such as when Alisa wonders how Dimitri knows that Lord Cai is paying the blackmailer, foreshadowing Dimitri’s reveal as the blackmailer himself much later in the book. Secrets—who shares them and who hears them—help sketch the shifting lines of trust in the novel; though Lord Cai includes Juliette in making plans about the blackmailers at the beginning of the novel, Tyler’s influence, Juliette’s antagonism towards the Nationalists with whom Lord Cai allies, and Tyler’s murder lead him to increasingly exclude her from Scarlet Gang business. In this early scene, Kathleen is sent from the room. Later, Kathleen and Juliette will routinely swap information. Trust and love do not necessarily overlap in these early chapters, however; Juliette loves Roma but is lying to him, just as she loves Kathleen and is lying to her, in both cases out of a desire to protect them. Juliette is somewhat hypocritical in this regard, as she resents the ways that she has been protected in the past. She thinks:
No one else is dying to protect me. Roma had blown up a whole house of people to keep Juliette safe. Tyler and his Scarlet men would go on a rampage in the name of defending Juliette, even if they too wanted her dead. It was all one and the same (18).
Juliette’s warning to Tyler not to conduct gang warfare in the International Settlement introduces the theme of Colonialism, Cultural Conflict, and Reorienting “Foreignness.” The threat of colonial powers in a colonized city is a pervasive fear throughout the novel, even though the foreigners largely remain background characters.
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