85 pages • 2 hours read
Camron WrightThe Rent Collector
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. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Dreams
Dreams and how to interpret those dreams feature frequently in The Rent Collector. Sang begins by describing her dream about her grandfather, and it is her dreams that convince her to take Nisay to her home province for treatment. Sopeap and Sang spend some time discussing dreams, and Sopeap acknowledges that dreams may not always mean nothing. Sopeap claims that some dreams are the mind’s way of forcing the dreamer to consider something important:
Our subconscious can be downright persistent in prodding us along our path, even if it’s a road we’d rather not travel. In this way, dreams are similar to literature. There can be a lesson, but sometimes that lesson is misinterpreted or misunderstood (141).
Sang’s dreams reflect this concept of subconscious “prodding." The dream Sang has at the beginning of the story—before she discovers that Sopeap can read and hatches a plan to learn to read herself—is prescient. Her grandfather tells Sang in her dream that “it starts today. Today is going to be a very lucky day” (3). At first, this seems ironic, as it is also the day that gang members rob Ki and Sopeap tries to evict them. It is not until much later that Sang realizes that “[t]he day Ki found Sopeap’s book, the same day he was robbed, the day that felt so miserable and terrible and discouraging—it was indeed a very lucky day” (264).
Sang’s dreams about the healer fill her with dread, as Bunna Heng repeats that Sang “should have come sooner” (140). Although she takes this to mean that it might be too late for him to help Nisay, she travels to her village to see the healer. Once there, however, Bunna Heng is “casual and quiet” (195). He does say Sang should have come sooner—not because he can no longer help Nisay, but because he could have then helped the child sooner. The narrative demonstrates that like stories, one must carefully interpret dreams.
Fairy Tales and Fables
Fairy tales like Sarann and “The Phoenix Bird,” as well as fables like those told about Sopeap Sin, are common throughout the story. Sopeap is particularly interested in why these stories appear to have a common source, and she interprets this as evidence that humans everywhere are interested in and concerned with the same things.
While fables and fairy tales teach lessons, these lessons are often unexpected. For example, while Sarann teaches the lesson that true beauty comes from inside, it also teaches the lesson of passively accepting bad behavior and waiting for rescue. Sopeap identifies a significant contradiction:
‘[I]f we take these stories too literally, if we expect our personal lives to always end with a handsome prince, most of us will close our books with shattered dreams. Yet, on the other hand—and this is the part that frustrates—if we don’t take the meaning of these stories literally, if we treat these tales as simply entertainment, we miss the deepest, most life-changing aspects of the stories’ (127).
Hope
Hope is key in this story, and it is what motivates Sang to learn to read, even if it means asking the fearsome Rent Collector for help. She believes her education will give hope to Nisay, that it “will give him something to look forward to, a reason to fight” (30).
Sopeap similarly argues that hope is the main concern of literature, and great stories give readers a reason to keep going. Sopeap even maintains that all humans have this desire for hope in common: “[T]he desire to believe, to look forward to better days, to want them, to expect them—it seems to be ingrained in our being” (125).
Hope is also the theme of many of the stories that Sang and Sopeap study, and similarly, hope is the main theme of Sang’s revised story of Sopeap’s origins. In the revised fable, Sang claims that Soriyan, disguised as Sopeap, was sent to Stung Meanchey to teach its residents about hope, concluding that “if we look carefully around Stung Meanchey, if we search for stories that teach truth and goodness, stories with lessons that can soften and change our hearts—we will discover hope” (264). The novel ends on a note of hope, not just with Sang’s fable, but with her declaration that she is off “to teach a young boy how to write his name” (264), which indicates that Sang will pass on the gift of literacy to others.
Stung Meanchey
Sang depicts the dump as unpleasant and ugly: “[It is] mountainous, covering over 100 acres. Piles of putrid rubbish tower hundreds of feet high, surrounded by constantly shifting valleys that weave and connect like the web of a jungle spider” (5). Although the dump symbolizes both prosperity and deterioration, for Sang, it is the source of all their problems. She believes Stung Meanchey’s constant state of toxicity contributes to Nisay’s poor health. When it rains, “foul liquids […] ooze, mix, and trickle into noxious streams. The waters splash and then dry, leaving ugly, black stains” (6). This environment is dangerous for all inhabitants, because even when it is not raining, the dump “is literally always on fire, and it is almost impossible to put out the flames” (7). Sang hates the dump, and she is desperate to find a way to live somewhere else.
However, she fails to see that the dump also provides a living for her family. As Ki points out, life at the dump is “hard […] but it is constant” (50), and he, Sang, and Nisay “have enough to eat” and “a roof overhead” (51). For Ki, Stung Meanchey symbolizes stability. There will always be garbage, unlike life in the provinces, where farmers are dependent on the unpredictable weather and the changing seasons.
By the end of the story, Stung Meanchey symbolizes human life in general. Some parts are terrible, and some are wonderful, but it is never only one thing or another. Sang comes to accept it as her home, and this explains why, despite their newfound wealth after Sopeap’s death, they have not moved away from the dump. Although Sang “still awake[s] every morning to a dump that is smoky,” she reveals that through that smoke, she has “seen some of the most amazing sunsets” (264).
Western Medicine and Folk Remedies
Through Nisay’s illness, the story engages with Western medicine and folk remedies, both which symbolize various kinds of knowledge. Much like how the Sang regards dreams, she perceives that there is good in both methods. Sang tries a variety of remedies for Nisay’s illness, including Western medicine’s commonly used menthol. She also tries the traditional Cambodian practice of cupping, in which cups one places heated cups on the patient’s skin to create suction. Cupping has become more popular thanks to its use by Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps.
Sang also takes Nisay to various clinics and hospitals that promote Western medicine. One of these doctors tells Sang that her use of folk remedies is nothing more than “superstitious nonsense” and “a complete waste of energy” (40). However, Sang notes that the doctor’s antibiotics did not work, and she wishes she could “find that doctor and explain to him the difference between superstition and intuition, and to let him know that his solution proved to be nonsense and a complete waste of energy” (40). Sang never privileges one form of knowledge over the other, though it is important to note that what eventually cures Nisay is the native treatment from Prey Veng’s healer, Bunna Heng.
