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

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Effects of War on Civilians

Aside from its dangers to combatants, war can be devastating to civilian populations as well. This is particularly true of impoverished countries, which may lack basic medical infrastructure, reliable food distribution, aid and relief services, and other safety nets that richer nations take for granted. Today, according to the World Bank, more than one billion people live in fragile and conflict-afflicted states (FCS), mostly in Asia and Africa. For these civilians, the many dangers of daily life include not only direct violence but also starvation, disease, forced relocation, and severe psychological trauma, which can lead to mental illness and suicide.

As The Clay Marble suggests, some conflicts may be deadlier for civilians than for the soldiers who fight them. The Cambodian Civil War, which culminated in the Cambodian Genocide, is a case in point: Various estimates put the number of civilian deaths between 1.5 and 3 million people, or 20-40% of the population. The Clay Marble does not describe, in any detail, the mass murder perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge regime upon its own people, since the book’s action begins after the Vietnamese Army has liberated the country, but the trauma and losses of the past five years are amply hinted at by, for instance, the “tally of the dead” that prefaces every conversation between strangers in the aid camps (16). The novel’s narrator, Dara, has lost her father and grandparents and her new friend Jantu has lost almost everyone she knows. Both of them grapple with devastating feelings of grief, fear, and sadness.

For these girls and others, who have just made a long, dangerous journey to the Thai border in hopes of foreign aid, the threats to life and limb go on: Parts of the country are still sown with landmines, and eruptions of military violence are common. A shelling by the Vietnam-controlled government injures Jantu’s baby brother and separates Dara from her family. Even more devastatingly, Jantu is later shot by a trigger-happy guard of one of the numerous “resistance armies” who are fighting each other as well as the government. Jantu dies of her injury because the only source of medical care—the Khao I Dang camp—is too dangerous to travel to at night and Sarun is more preoccupied with his impending military enlistment than in getting her treatment.

Another sinister feature of civil war which—in the novel’s Cambodia and elsewhere—threatens a nation’s stability and undermines its future is the systematic militarization of daily life, especially in areas controlled by army factions, where civilians often seek haven from hunger and random violence. Here, young men such as Sarun are coerced into military service, which takes them away from their farms and other civilian jobs, depletes the country’s stores of rice seed and other resources, and perpetuates the cycle of violence and political unrest. As The Clay Marble repeatedly demonstrates through the struggles of Dara and her family and friends, civilians are often the ones who lose most in the midst of armed conflict regardless of which side “wins.”

Hope and Courage in the Face of Adversity

The Clay Marble suggests that survival in the face of unimaginable terrors and almost insurmountable odds is largely a matter of controlling one’s thoughts and feelings on a basic level—of suppressing the impulse to panic or the paralysis of grief. In constantly emphasizing the importance of hope and courage in the face of adversity, the novel expresses through Dara’s character arc the human ability to overcome even the most intimidating hardships.

In The Clay Marble, when Dara and Jantu are mapping out their dream farm in clay, Dara remembers her murdered father and wants to quit; Jantu asks her, “How can you dream if you don’t learn to shut off the thoughts you don’t want?” (51). Jantu knows that courage and hope come from keeping a clear head and always moving forward, if only in baby steps, toward a goal. Later, when Jantu’s baby brother is injured by an exploding shell and Dara finds herself separated from her family, Jantu tells her that she must do the logical thing to find them again: She must go back, all by herself, to Nong Chan and wait for them by the stone crossbeam. “It’s a scary world out there,” she says, “[b]ut we’re here, and we’re stuck with it, aren’t we?” (69).

This moment is when Jantu molds for Dara the second clay marble, a “more powerful” one that will give her the courage and patience to find her family. Making this marble—compacting the wet clay in her hands—is analogous to a feat of mental discipline: an act of concentration that yields a perfect shape. A symbol of solidity and order like the stone crossbeam, as well as of Jantu’s faith in her, stroking the marble helps Dara focus on her goal. Little by little, Dara’s self-confidence and ability to navigate the obstacles in her way grow.

Eventually Dara, having faced and overcome numerous perils, finds the self-confidence to make her own marble—that is, to rely on her own courage and wisdom rather than looking to others. In a land ravaged by violence and sudden death, this is an essential strength. In her heart and mind, she keeps the spirits of her dead loved ones alive, but in a way that gives her hope rather than despair. Facing down her wayward brother and other obstacles, she ultimately makes Jantu’s dream farm a reality, saving herself, her family, and even—in her own modest way—the future of Cambodia itself.

Friendship and Loyalty

The turbulent events of The Clay Marble illustrate how personal bonds, such as friendship and loyalty, can be essential to survival in a war-torn land. When Dara arrives at the Nong Chan refugee camp, she is seized with “wonder” by something that most people would take for granted: the sights and sounds of “living, laughing, loving” (13). All of this seems, to Dara, like a distant memory or dream. For almost five years under the Khmer Rouge, families were split up, friends and relatives died or went missing, and emotional bonds with other individuals were discouraged. Here in the camp, Dara will quickly learn how valuable friendship and loyalty are for personal and national survival.

At the camp, Dara meets Jantu, a girl close to her own age, and the two bond quickly over their shared losses and their dreams for the future. Both of them long to make their broken lives whole again, but to do so, they know they will have to find new friends and relatives to replace the ones that were lost. As Jantu observes, they no longer have “real” families, just “bits and pieces of one” (45). They foster hopes that Dara’s older brother will marry Jantu’s cousin, which will not only cement their friendship but make them relatives as well. A family bond, they know, is the strongest there is, and wistfully the two of them map out their future together in the form of an elaborate clay model of a rice farm and family compound, complete with figures of themselves and the two newlyweds. Jantu senses Dara’s inner strength and sense of loyalty to her family, and this is partly why she is drawn to her. Dara, for her part, is entranced by Jantu’s creative talent and her dreams for the future.

This sisterly bond is deepened by Jantu’s tender guidance of her friend, which includes molding for her a “magic marble” which, she says, will give her courage and strength in times of trouble. Though Dara is not fully aware of it at first, it is her love and admiration for Jantu that gives the clay ball its “magic”: Holding it in her hand makes her feel almost as if Jantu is by her side. Later, the dying Jantu tells Dara that the magic is really within herself: To be loyal to the dreams they have made together, she must continue to be strong and courageous, which means standing up to her brother, whose loyalties are shifting away from his family and toward the Khmer Serei militia. When Jantu dies of her wound, Dara shows her loyalty to her family and to her dead friend by winning a battle of wills with the vacillating Sarun, ultimately realizing Jantu’s dreams of uniting their two families in a shared farm back in Siem Reap.

Dara’s devotion to her friend and to her family—and, by extension, to the future of her country—contrasts sharply with her older brother’s shifting notions of loyalty, as he falls under the sway of the Khmer Serei’s macho culture of grievance, nationalism, and violence. His growing callousness and fanaticism as he devotes himself more and more to the militia and its vague nationalistic goals are eerily reminiscent of the darkest days of the Khmer Rouge, with its coldblooded demands of total loyalty to the state. In the end, Dara proves herself to be the stronger of the two as well as the more farsighted, with a truer sense of loyalty to family, friends, and country, leading her toward the brighter future she has long dreamed about.