Genre
Fiction/Novel
Setting and Context
Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in Cambodia.
Narrator and Point of View
Narrated in the first-person perspective by Sang Ly.
Tone and Mood
Overall, the mood of the story is one of intensifying irony. The tone is dark due to the circumstances, but optimistic due to the emotional investment of the narration.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: literacy and education. Antagonist: illiteracy, ignorance and authoritarianism.
Major Conflict
The larger conflict at work in the story is consequences resulting from the tension between been progressive and regressive ideology.
Climax
The story climaxes with the revelations of the full history of the recent collector’s past and present.
Foreshadowing
“I wanted to hang the clock on our wall because I liked its flowered face—but that’s not exactly true. There is more. It helps me to remember that even though something is broken, it can still serve a purpose.” The present and potential state of the clock foreshadows the revelations about the rent collector’s past.
Understatement
“Who knew that literature was so tangled and complicated?” An understatement in any book regardless of context.
Allusions
The book references Moby-Dick and Cinderella as suggestive allusions to specificities of plot and broader themes.
Imagery
The title character’s introduction will prove to ironic and so the intensity of the imagery of essential in setting up expectations so that the plot turn is dramatic: “Sopeap is an abrupt, bitter, angry woman who has lived at Stung Meanchey longer than anyone can remember. There is a story told by some—perhaps myth, perhaps not—that claims she was the illegitimate child of Vadavamukha, a sky perhaps not—that claims she was the illegitimate child of Vadavamukha, a sky god with the body of a man and the head of a horse.”
Paradox
N/A
Parallelism
The allusion to Moby-Dick enhances the narrative by delineating a parallel between the monomaniacal thirst for revenge manifested by Captain Ahab against the whale and by Ki against gang that beat and robbed him.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
“The sun at Stung Meanchey shows no prejudice. It scorches the old and young, the fat and skinny, the humble and proud.”
