45 pages • 1 hour read
Hanna AlkafThe Weight of Our Sky
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A 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
Melati, or “Mel,” imagines her mother’s death at school. Mel believes a Djinn, or spirit, is possessing her, causing her to imagine terrible things if she does not follow its instructions. At the end of class, Mel’s best friend Safiyah, or “Saf,” interrupts her, reminding Mel that they are going to the movies. Mel wants to go to a closer theater, but Saf insists on going to the Rex because a boy she likes, Jason, works at his father’s sugarcane stall across the street. Mel acquiesces, and the two get on a bus, but Mel’s seat is taken by an older Chinese woman. Mel takes a different seat, tapping her feet in threes to settle the Djinn, who conjures images of her mother’s death.
Chapter 2 Summary
Mel stops to call her mother, and she and Mel assure each other that they are fine. Mel tells her mother that she is going to the movies with Saf, remembering how her mother was disturbed by Mel’s admission of the frightening visions the Djinn gives her. Mel and Saf get drinks and go to a record store, noting a fortuneteller on the street. Saf tells Mel about political violence happening in Kuala Lumpur between Malay and Chinese people following a Chinese victory in a recent election, but Mel is not interested in politics.
Mel’s mental health struggles began shortly after her father’s death. A doctor told her to change her diet and start exercising, and Mel began playing badminton. When Mel loses one day, she panics and breaks her racket. After the badminton incident, Mel overhears her mother talking with her aunt, Mak Su, who suggests talking to a psychiatrist, which Mel’s mother rejects out of fear of Mel’s being admitted to a psychiatric institution. Mak Su suggests that Mel might be possessed by a Djinn, which Mel’s mother denies, but Mel believes is true.
Before the film, Mel and Saf stop at Jason’s sugarcane stall, and Saf flirts with Jason. During the Paul Newman film, Mel is plagued by visions of her mother’s death, and, after the movie, Saf wants to see it again. Mel refuses, tired of fighting the Djinn, and she leaves. Outside, the street is empty, and a passing man tells Mel that Malay and Chinese people are killing each other.
Chapter 3 Summary
Mel panics, thinking about her mother’s safety, then she decides to go back into the theater to get Saf. The attendant stops her and makes her buy a new ticket, then he leads Mel into the theater to Saf’s seat. Mel tells Saf that they need to leave immediately, and Saf is reluctant, wanting to finish the movie. Mel finally convinces her, but, as they are leaving, the lights come on in the theater, and the screen displays an emergency declaration. Men with knives and tattoos block the exit, telling everyone to split into two groups: Malay and Chinese. Mel freezes as the leader of the tattooed men pulls Saf to the Malay group. A woman in the audience recognizes Mel and tells the man that Mel is Eurasian, and the man tells Mel and the other non-Malay audience members to leave. Mel protests, saying she needs to bring Saf home, but the woman tells her the men will kill her if she stays or fights.
Chapter 4 Summary
The Chinese woman introduces herself as Auntie Bee. Armed men appear, and a man helps Mel and Auntie Bee into a grate. The rioters are setting shops on fire. Mel and Auntie Bee flee to a nearby shop, but rioters light the shop on fire. Mel and Auntie Bee escape, and Vincent, Auntie Bee’s son, picks them up in his car. Vincent brings Auntie Bee and Mel to their home. After her father died, Mel lost faith in God, but the remedies her mother sought for the Djinn were often religious. Mel remembers her mother taking her to an ustaz, a healer, and the treatment cost a lot of money. Mel noticed how her mother grew tired and decided to lie to her mother, claiming the Djinn was gone.
Auntie Bee gets Mel clean clothes and makes food. They all eat dinner while they wait for Auntie Bee’s husband to get home. Her other son, Frankie, says the Malay people are causing trouble for the Chinese people, noting how the Chinese people came to Malaysia to help build the country before and after independence from Britain. Auntie Bee chastises Frankie, and Vincent argues with him. Auntie Bee’s husband, Uncle Chong, gets home and explains that the riots are occurring because the Malay people feel the Chinese people are gaining too much political representation. When they hear rioters outside, Uncle Chong brings them sticks and tools to use as weapons. There is a 24-hour curfew, but a woman with a baby bangs on the door, and they let her in. That night, Mel cannot sleep, counting books in her room, and in the morning, the house is filled with neighbors whose homes were destroyed in the riot.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The opening chapters of the novel introduce the reader to the two main conflicts of the narrative: Melati’s mental health struggles and the racial issues in Malaysia. Though the setting of late 1960s Malaysia complicates Melati’s struggle, opening a theme of The Stigma and Reality of Mental Health, the isolation and judgment Mel feels are common among people who struggle with mental health in all parts of the world. On one hand, her anxiety is perpetually “unfurling yet another death scene in all its technicolor glory” (2). On the other hand, if Mel asks for help, she knows “[t]hose quacks will just send her to the asylum, or worse” (24), implying the possibility of a forced lobotomy. The nature of Mel’s mental health struggle, identified by the author as OCD, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, is characterized by thoughts and behaviors that intrude into a person’s mind involuntarily. In Mel’s case, these thoughts are of her mother’s death, while the actions are tapping, counting, or reciting things in patterns of three. These actions and thoughts are involuntary, and Mel often phrases the Djinn’s presence as an intrusion or violation of her mental sanctity. The origin of Mel’s struggle appears to be her father’s death, which Mel reveals occurred during a previous race riot in Penang one year prior to the events of the novel. Thinking about her mother during the riot in the present, the Djinn says, “And now Mama will die the same way” (73), reflecting the way Mel’s anxiety about her father’s death crosses over into a persistent obsession with her mother’s safety. Instead of confronting the OCD as a mental health issue, which could result in hospitalization, Mel and her mother treat it as a religious struggle, with Mel referring to her anxiety as a Djinn and treatments including prayer and potions.
Unfortunately, Mel’s isolation is largely driven by her own fear of upsetting others or drawing attention to herself, relating directly to the burgeoning theme of The Importance of Love and Friendship. Mel comments, “The day I gave my mother back her light, I vowed I would never let her know my darkness again” (62), noting how her mother’s persistence in trying to find a cure for Mel led her to deteriorate, illustrated as “her light” fading. Emphasizing Mel’s anxiety about being seen differently or acknowledging her struggles with mental health, Mel panics when Auntie Bee tries to help her outside the Rex, thinking, “You’re not supposed to be seen. You’re never supposed to be seen” (41). Mel feels that her conflict with the Djinn is a marker of difference and potentially of danger, both for herself and those around her, which is likely why she keeps her struggle a secret even from her best friend, Saf. Mel does feel “a sudden urge to tell her, to blurt out everything” (21), but she resolves this by simply saying, “Yeah right.” This illustrates how, though the benefit of friendship is support and kindness, Mel suspects that Saf will recoil at the truth of Mel’s intrusive and obsessive thoughts like her mother.
The racial component of the novel, Race and Identity in a Society Divided Along Racial Lines, is only superficially introduced. This occurs through the race riots themselves, as well as through Frankie, Uncle Chong, and Vincent’s comments regarding the riot as it occurs. The important detail to note in this early chapter section is that Mel is falsely identified as Eurasian, and Eurasian people are classified as lain-lain, or “other,” since there is no specific delineation of which ethnicities combine for each Eurasian family or group. As such, Mel is placed, in a way, separate from the conflict in the novel, as shown in the Rex, where Mel is excused from the theater along with the Chinese audience members. However, Mel is still excluded from the Chinese groups, as Uncle Chong comments, “Some Malays—not all of you, my dear” (73), accurately grouping Mel with the Malay people. This position of being separate or distinct from the overarching conflict will likely play heavily into Mel’s development of her own identity, finding a place between two opposing groups, even though Mel is Malay. Critically, Uncle Chong highlights the complaints of both Malay and Chinese people, indicating broader social and economic issues beyond the apparent segregation of the races.
