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Chapter Seventeen
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Rent Collector, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Power of Literature
Appearances, Judgment, and Hidden Character
Heroism and Self-Sacrifice
Hope and Action
Humor and Resilience
Summary
Analysis
During the next lesson, Sopeap decides it’s time they read a tragedy, and introduces Sang Ly to Romeo and Juliet. Later that afternoon, Sang Ly notices that none of the villagers are working near the trucks as they usually do, and a woman runs past her shouting that a crowd of people caught one of the thieves who beat up Lucky Fat. Sang Ly joins them, but seeing that the culprit is just a teenage boy whom the villagers beat to death, she is horrified. Looking closer, Sang Ly realizes that the dead child is Maly’s older brother. Sang Ly vomits onto the ground.
Although the narrative does not describe or discuss anything about Romeo and Juliet, Sang Ly and Sopeap’s reading of it clearly foreshadows the Maly’s brother’s tragic death at the hands of the villagers. The fact that the criminal is only a young boy pointedly blurs any simple notions of good and evil, since although the culprit was ready to commit a heinous evil, he himself still seems a child, and thus innocent to some degree.
Themes
Ki places his hand on Sang Ly’s back; his other hand holds the knife uncertainly. He explains to her that while they were working, two men spotted the boy and chased him, and soon it was the whole group of villagers pursuing him. Ki joined the pursuit, but secretly hoped they wouldn’t catch the boy. By the time he caught up to the first pursuers, they’d already killed the child. Sang Ly and Ki weep together as Sang Ly wonders why, in the good and evil conflict between Captain Ahab and the whale, the roles aren’t more clearly defined and easy to understand. In spite of all the literary knowledge Sopeap gave her, words cannot bring meaning to the anguish they both feel.
Ki’s knife, held but unused, again symbolizes his sense of power, except that now he has no wish to use it. While Ki once held ideas about standing up to the gangs and bravely exerting his own power and thus heroism, the villagers exerting their power by beating the boy to death like an angry mob seems utterly unheroic. If anything, it is grotesque. This scene firmly argues that heroism and power are not necessarily linked, as Ki had once believed.
Themes
The next morning, the boy’s body is gone, but Sang Ly and Lucky Fat hold a small memorial service for him anyway, leaving small gifts as funerary offering on the site where he died. Lucky Fat suggests that Maly’s brother can finally watch over her now in the next life, and Sang Ly agrees. Although she considers telling Sopeap that she is too distraught to learn about literature today, as she thinks about Captain Ahab, revenge, justice, and mercy, she decides that maybe literature is the perfect thing for the day.
Lucky Fat’s forgiveness and sadness for a boy who hurt him and sought to sell his own sister demonstrates his maturity in spite of his young age. The thought that perhaps Maly’s brother will look after her now that he is in the next life suggests that the boy was not evil at his core, but only caught up with the wrong people and corrupted by his environment.
Themes
