The Clay Marble

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1991

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapter 17-Afterword

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

Twelve-year-old Dara, the story’s narrator, hears the chime of a cowbell from deep in the rainforest. She is on an oxcart with her mother and older brother, traveling west to Cambodia’s border with Thailand. Sarun, her eighteen-year-old brother, has heard that refugee camps near the border are dispensing aid to impoverished Cambodians like themselves—not only food, but rice seed and other agricultural supplies. A bull-drawn cart emerging from the forest—the source of the chiming—seems to confirm this: It is loaded with plowshares, hoe heads, and big sacks of rice. The cart’s driver tells them that the Nong Chan refugee camp to the east has almost unlimited supplies: “They practically throw things at you” (11).

For over three years, Dara tells us, she and everyone she knows have been living in a “nightmare” of terror, starvation, and violent death—ever since the communist Khmer Rouge guerillas took over the country in 1975. Her own father was led away one night and executed in the forest, perhaps because he was educated, or possibly because he went hunting for snails at night to feed his dying mother. Dara has only the faintest memories of a “happier” time, back before the country’s ruler, Prince Sihanouk, was deposed in a 1970 coup. This was followed by civil war, massive aerial bombings, and finally the ascent of the brutal Khmer Rouge. The new rulers ruthlessly broke up families and emptied cities, turning the once-prosperous nation of Cambodia into a vast slave camp policed by murderous guards and plagued by starvation and disease.

Now, Dara tells us, it is 1980, and the Khmer Rouge has been driven out of power by the invading Vietnamese Army. Her brother has escaped from a work camp and rejoined them; the Vietnamese, he tells his mother and sister, are still struggling to tighten their hold on the country, so now is the perfect (and maybe only) time for them to make their way to the border, where foreign aid is being widely distributed. With it, they can eventually restart their family farm in their old village.

The rumors of foreign aid, it seems, are true. As the cart with the cow bell passes them, piled high with free food and supplies from Nong Chan, Dara’s mother whispers a prayer of thanks to the Buddha.

Chapter 2 Summary

The Nong Chan refugee camp, a vast labyrinth of tents and lean-tos, is for Dara a place of hope and wonder, an enchanting reminder of how Cambodia used to be, before the Khmer Rouge. Her family discovers that food is plentiful and the people are happy and welcoming. They quickly make friends with an extended family who came from the same district they did, Siem Reap. This family consists of a girl (Nea) about the same age as Sarun, her grandfather, and two cousins: thirteen-year-old Jantu and her infant brother, Nebut. All their other relatives—their parents and siblings—died during the Khmer Rouge years. Nea shows Dara a huge stone beam half-sunken in the ground, perhaps from an ancient temple; its surface has faint carvings of what appears to be a dancer’s delicate hand. Reunited with her brother, in a place of warmth and plenty (even if it is a refugee camp), Dara feels as if she has “finally come back home” (22).

Chapter 3 Summary

Bathing at the well, Dara meets Nea’s cousin Jantu, who is slightly older than herself, and her baby brother, Nebut. At first, Jantu treats the younger girl with mild derision, insulting her looks, but then laughs agreeably when Dara insults her back. Soon, the girls are fast friends. Meanwhile, Sarun builds a shelter and hammock for the family, which makes Dara feel more at home. Jantu shows Dara how to get delicious hot meals from a food truck that stops daily at a nearby signpost to feed the camp’s children. It has been a long time since Dara has known such contentment; she feels almost as if she is in paradise.

Chapter 4 Summary

For several days, Nea’s family has been sharing their allotment of food with Dara’s family. One evening, Nea describes for them the logistics of the camp’s food distribution system: Every two weeks, a huge convoy of food trucks arrives at Nong Chan from Thailand. Families must register in advance, as part of a team, to claim their portion of supplies and basic foodstuffs. The next convoy is due in five or six days. Dara asks Nea if her family can join her team, and the older girl happily agrees, since it already “feels” as if they are one big family.

Several days later, Dara is allowed to join the team’s leaders, which include her brother and Nea’s grandfather, on their drive to the food distribution site in the heart of Nong Chan. For the first time, she grasps the sheer size of the camp, which shelters 40,000 refugees. After a short wait at the convoy, their carts are loaded up, with “clocklike” efficiency, with tons of food and supplies: not only with rice for eating, but also four hefty sacks of special “rice seed” that has been treated against insects and disease. After a few months at Nong Chan, Sarun says, they will have enough seed and tools to return to their village and replant their farm, just in time for the monsoons.

Meanwhile, Jantu sees hopeful signs that the two families may soon be united by marriage: As she points out to Dara, Sarun and Nea seem to be pursuing a tentative romance. This, together with the bags of rice seed and rumors that the next convoy will bring a big shipment of plows, hoes, and fish nets, warms Dara with a joyful “quiver” of hope for the future.

Chapters 1-4 Analysis

The Clay Marble opens on a note of mystery and wonder: a chiming sound from deep in a forest. The twelve-year-old narrator Dara is first to hear it, hinting at her powers of perception, which (as later events bear out) are more reliable than her older brother’s. At first, it sounds as if it might be cicadas, or the breeze: gentle sounds of nature, which is auspicious—after years of bombing and firefights, the “shrill” voices of the Khmer Rouge guards, and the unnatural, machine-like drudgery of the work camps. As Dara and her family discover its source, they emerge from a long “nightmare” into a waking dream: The rumors of bountiful largess at the Thai border, it seems, are absolutely true. The cowbell on the bull’s neck now seems a harbinger of freedom, as well as of peace and plenty, with its resounding message that open travel in Cambodia is permitted once again and food is plentiful.

Dara reflects on how close her family came to extinction, introducing the theme The Effects of War on Civilians: Her father was murdered by guards, her brother sent away for forced labor, and their once-prosperous village was reduced to a wasteland—all by the Khmer Rouge, who sought to eradicate families in the name of the new “family” of the communist state. This national and family trauma illuminates the novel’s central conflict: that is, the demands of the state—specifically, the various armies fighting each other to determine the political future of Cambodia—versus the needs of the family. The Clay Marble comes out solidly on the side of the family as natural, life-giving, stable, and eternal—as opposed to the horrors of mechanized war and the chaos of Cambodia’s factionalism. Throughout, it associates the family with love, loyalty, social cohesion, and with such elements of nature as flowers, stone, water, animals, and agriculture, and thus with the future of Cambodia itself.

At the Nong Chan refugee camp, Dara discovers Hope and Courage in the Face of Adversity. Dara is entranced by the sounds of “living, laughing, loving” families, so different from the “cold-blooded Khmer Rouge version” (13). At the camp, authorities shower them with food and other supplies instead of taking them away, and families happily share what they have with newcomers. A member of one of these families (Nea) shows Dara a massive stone crossbeam, possibly a fragment of an ancient temple like Angkor Wat. Later events and imagery correlate this stone with the stability and comforts of family, and, through its delicate carvings of a dancer’s hand, with creativity and culture, particularly that of women. Like many of the families in the refugee camp, it has been broken and uprooted, probably by war, but still endures—offering protection and solace to Dara and others, as well as a memory of a glorious past that augurs good things for the future.

Dara feels a “quiver” of this unfurling possibility when her new friend Jantu informs her that her cousin Nea and Dara’s brother Sarun seem to be romantically involved. As Jantu says later, family bonds are more reliable than friendships, especially in war-torn countries like theirs, and their two broken families must find a way to “grow.” For now, the novel holds out the hope that their two families may someday be joined by marriage to face the future, whatever it may bring.