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 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
The Khmer Rouge leaders will arrive in two weeks for a camp inspection and a concert. A new teacher, Mek, has arrived to teach the children the Revolutionary song they must perform. The Khmer Rouge have outlawed all other music and at first, Mek, whose family has been killed by the Khmer Rouge, refuses to teach the propaganda song that proclaims the children’s love for Angka.
Arn befriends Kha, a skinny kid who also plays the khim, and Siv, a dancer with the performance troupe. Although he hates the Khmer Rouge too, Arn shows the other band members how to smile big and sing loudly about their love for the Revolution. A few days before the concert, he sneaks into the men’s building and reminds Mek that even though his own family is gone, he has a chance to save the children in the band by teaching them the Revolutionary music. Mek agrees.
The day of the concert arrives. The Khmer Rouge leaders are pleased with the children’s performance, but they impose even stricter rules on the camp. Arn realizes the Khmer Rouge guards are getting younger. The soldiers brutalizing children in the fields and executing prisoners are now “kid, like us” (66). The band plays its Revolutionary song more and more often, and Arn realizes it is to hide the sound of killings that take place in the mango fields every day.
Chapter 5 Summary
One day, the Khmer Rouge tells the band that they are going to play their songs in a new place. They drive out to the mango grove and Arn is sure they are going to be killed. Instead, they are commanded to play for the workers. “Every day is like holiday time,” they sing; “Good songs and shouts of joy ring out on every side as the peasants work the fields” (71). When the song finishes the unsmiling, skeletal workers all clap together in unison.
The band travels to play for workers in other labor camps. Each night, their hands and feet are tied so they can’t escape. They can smell the meat, fish and rice wine the Khmer Rouge leaders eat while people around them are dying of starvation, dysentery and malaria.
Back at camp, Arn realizes he has become famous for his khim playing, and the girl who works in the kitchen gives him extra rice. She is the girlfriend of a Khmer Rouge soldier, so Arn must obey when she takes him to her building at night.
Arn is motivated to make himself indispensable to the band in order to protect himself. When new children arrive to dance along with the song the band plays, Arn learns the dances, too. Arn also admits that he likes being “a little bit famous” (73). Soon, he is able get special privileges from the Khmer Rouge for himself and his friends because he is a valuable performer.
Chapter 6 Summary
The next harvest is poor. Children are dying of malnutrition and overwork. The soil has been worked too hard, but the Khmer Rouge say it is because the workers are lazy. Food becomes even scarcer.
Arn and the others have been at the camp for two years. He notices that none of the children have gotten bigger in that time; they have only grown old: “All have bellies swole up, like balloon. All have knee and elbow big like melon. Some with hair turned yellow. Some with hair falling out” (82). They work all day and night, with only short periods of rest.
A new guard named Sombo takes an interest in Arn. In the evenings, Sombo takes Arn outside the camp, and makes him play the khim for him blindfolded. Arn even teaches Sombo how to play a little. When Arn returns to camp, no one can believe it because no one returns after being taken by the Khmer Rouge. Sombo notices Arn stealing rice and giving it to the other children but does not stop him. Arn realizes Sombo, who is still a teenager, sympathizes with him. It is possible that, not long ago, Sombo was in a work camp like Arn’s. Sombo explains to Arn that the Khmer Rouge soldiers don’t really have any power; they only kill so that they won’t be killed themselves.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Music was once a joyful part of Arn’s life, but the Khmer Rouge turn it into an appalling parody of celebration. Life in the camps is a cruel contrast to the upbeat melody and lyrics of the Revolutionary songs Arn and his musical ensemble are forced to perform. Both the performers and the audience are dying of starvation as the children sing about the plentiful harvests and their love for Angka.
Even though Arn’s musical aptitude increases his chances of survival, he struggles with the moral cost of becoming a favorite of the Khmer Rouge. One night, while he is working in the kitchen, a soldier brings him a cut of meat to cook. Arn has been in the camp for two years and is entranced by the smell of meat since they normally only eat thin rice gruel. Then he realizes it is a human liver. He is torn between desire for survival and repulsion, the same way he felt when he scooped up the rice bowl of a girl who died sitting beside him at the communal dinner table (52).
Arn knows the Khmer Rouge are monsters and he feels he is turning into a monster himself. He tries to hang onto his humanity by making connections with others in the camp when the guards aren’t looking. His father-son relationship with Mek is a good example. Arn lost his father before the war and Mek lost his family during the war. Each fills an emotional gap in the other’s life. With his peers, Arn often acts as a protector, helping the weaker Kha and the well-meaning but clumsy Siv navigate life in the camp.
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