The Rent Collector: Chapter Twenty-Five Summary & Analysis

Sang Ly reads Sopeap’s essay, “The Epilogue”: By 1975, Cambodia has experienced so much civil war and “factional fighting” that when the Khmer Rouge army marched into Phnom Penh and declared victory, nearly everyone is happy. However, Sopeap’s husband, Samnang, a government employee, is nervous about the regime change. Although most people seem content with the change, the city is also tense, reeling from a recent string of rocket attacks.  Sopeap, her husband, their infant son, and her housekeeper (whose name is Sopeap Sin) confine themselves to their modern three-story house for several days straight.

Sopeap is restless, however, and decides to venture the short distance through the city to Samnang’s sister’s house to fetch some eggs. Samnang asks the housekeeper to accompany her, even though Sopeap thinks little of her and plans to fire her soon. Though the housekeeper is nervous, they make their way to the sister’s house, retrieve a basketful of eggs, and venture home. On the way, the housekeeper stumbles and cracks a few of the eggs, and Sopeap harshly berates her and takes the basket herself.

As they pass through the gate to their yard, the two women are met by four Khmer Rouge soldiers, who point rifles at them and escort them inside, where they find Samnang also held hostage by a soldier who seems to be hardly more than a boy. Like all Khmer Rouge soldiers, they are intent on killing anyone with an education or high post in the government.

With a glance at Samnang, Sopeap can tell he is formulating a plan, but she cannot imagine what. Looking directly at the housekeeper, Samnang calls her Soriyan, Sopeap’s true name, and the housekeeper, the original Sopeap Sin, understands immediately. She strides towards him with dignity and class, as if she were a sophisticated professor and not a mere housekeeper. Samnang’s true wife watches, but does not speak. Samnang pulls the housekeeper close as if she was his wife, and a soldier shoots them both dead.

The gunshots wake Soriyan’s sleeping child, who cries until a soldier walks back to his room and shoots him as well. Soriyan screams and begs the soldiers to kill her too, but their mission is only to kill the educated, not peasants, farmers, or housekeepers. Two days later, Soriyan—permanently adopting the housekeeper’s name, Sopeap Sin—is marched out of the city with hundreds of thousands of refugees to be put to work farming in a rural camp. This is the Khmer Rouge’s aim: to make Cambodia as rural and simple as it was before Western culture had its effects. Any person suspected of having even the most remote connection to Western culture is killed on the spot, and Sopeap expects to die every single day. By the time the Vietnamese army overthrows the Khmer Rouge, the regime has butchered over 1 million people.

Soriyan, now Sopeap Sin, eventually makes her way back to Phnom Penh, but never picks up her life as it was before. In 1995, she moves to Stung Meanchey, which seems a suitable place for her to try to forget who she once was and how much she lost, at least until she meets Sang Ly. Sopeap is haunted for all those years by the fact that she did not speak up, identify herself as the true Soriyan, and save the life of the housekeeper (the true Sopeap Sin).

Sopeap writes that the final lesson for Sang Ly to learn is, “Be careful in your choices. Consequences, good or bad, will always follow. I offer you my final goodbye, Sang Ly.” But as Sang Ly closes the notebook, sobbing, she screams that Sopeap was wrong, that she took the wrong lesson from her life, and resolves that she must find her teacher before she dies.