The Windup Girl

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 16 Summary

Hock Seng sits in the office during the early morning and thinks how he can get into Anderson’s safe, to get the papers for the Dung Lord. Mai, the little girl who assists him, appears at the door and tells Hock to come with her. She acts suspiciously, and he thinks he is about to fall into a trap. He grabs her and puts a knife to her neck, but she tells him the issue is with two of the workers near the algae vats. He finds them both ill and tells Mai to take them to a hospital. He helps load them on the cycle rickshaw and they drive away. Hock has a sense of foreboding that the algae vats have made the men sick.

Chapter 17 Summary

Jaidee sits in a monastery and wears white robes, instead of orange, for he is not to become a real monk. His head and eyebrows have been shaved as he waits to be banished to the wastelands. He contemplates a painting of the Buddha under a bo tree and realizes the essential teaching of Buddhism: all is change and change is the only truth. He goes to see Kanya and asks her for a gun. He vows to take revenge on the Ministry of Trade, embodied by Akkarat.

Jaidee and his colleague, Somchai, break into the Ministry of Trade to find the man whom Jaidee believes kidnapped Chaya. Caught by guards, they are brought to the top of the building. Jaidee’s hands are tied behind his back; he’s been shot in the arm and teeters at the edge of the roof. Akkarat appears and Jaidee manages to break Akkarat’s leg with his knee. Jaidee is shot by the Black Panthers, palace guards who protect Akkarat, and is pushed off the building, falling to his death.

Chapter 18 Summary

Hock Seng senses the tension in the city now that Jaidee, the Tiger of Bangkok, is dead. White shirts are out in full force and Hock fears the growing sickness in the factory. Mai comes to tell him that she is leaving, since she doesn’t want to become ill herself. Hock is generous with the cash he gives for her pay. White shirts enter the factory. Hock remembers how he left Malaya too late and he doesn’t want to be in the same situation. He takes all of the remaining cash, opens a window, and sees the hot roof tiles. Mai asks him, “What is this?” to which he replies, “an escape route. Yellow cards always prepare for worst,” as he hoists her up, adding, “We are paranoid, you know” (182).

Chapters 16-18 Analysis

Jaidee’s death ties together many of the religious aspects that the novel, especially those having to do with destiny, duty, and karma. The few days Jaidee spends in the monastery provide him with a kind of enlightenment. The bo tree, beneath which the Buddha found his own enlightenment, have now been infested with ivory beetles and much of this destruction has to do with foreigners, who have destroyed the environment. He realizes the central truth of Buddhism—that all is change—is a simple lesson that eludes many because of its obviousness. His death will have consequences both politically and karmically. At one point, Jaidee asks Akkarat if Akkarat will push him over the roof of the building himself, or if he’ll “try to put the stain on [his] men” and “see them come back as cockroaches in their next life to be squashed ten thousand times before a decent rebirth” all “for the sake of profit” (78).

Jaidee’s death has broad consequences the next day. The white shirts are angry at Trade, and their storming of the kink-spring factory most likely signifies a vengeful move on their part. Sickness pervades the factory, and although Hock Seng threatens to cut Mai’s throat, he pities her and takes her with him as he escapes. He even smiles as he hoists her up to the window to escape across the hot roof of the factory. In some way, his helping her compensates for the loss of his own daughter, whom he resented after leaving Malaya. Mai replaces that daughter and becomes a surrogate for Hock.