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
On her way home, Sang Ly checks several other hospitals in the city to see if they know of Sopeap, but none do. She and Ki stop in at Sopeap’s house once more to see if there are any other clues, but they find none aside from a book with a fiery bird on its cover—the phoenix story. As she cooks rice that evening, Sang Ly reads through several more of Sopeap’s essays from her notebook, searching for some kind of clue, when she finds a story that seems to be significant.
Although they’ve never read the phoenix story together, Sopeap specifically stated that it was her favorite, indicating that it will obviously play an important role in the last chapters, though it is not useful in determining where Sopeap is at present. Once again, however, Sopeap’s personal essays provide a window into her carefully-locked heart.
Themes
“The Old Woman and the Elephant” by Sopeap Sin: When the old woman arrives at the Khmer Rouge camp, she is already tired, and imagines she will die any moment, since death is all around her. The soldiers are sure to remind her at every opportunity that she is irrelevant, just one more piece of the mass of humanity, utterly disposable. Education, they say, is selfish, as is commerce or anything beyond the working man’s labor. Life becomes a nonsensical nightmare, beatings come at random, for any reason or no reason at all. After three years and four months, the old woman decides to kill herself.
The Khmer Rouge’s belief that education is a selfish endeavor suggests that even if they had achieved their rural, collectivist utopia, it could not have gone anywhere. Without education to broaden its people’s horizons or guide their thinking, the Khmer Rouge effectively stifled their own movement by denying it any possibility to grow or develop. In such a nonsensical situation, the old woman does not want to live because life seems hopeless.
Themes
One morning, she walks into the jungle to let the wilderness kill her by any means it sees fit, rather than let a soldier kill her. A rustling noise emanates from a copse of trees, and the old woman closes her eyes, assuming death is coming for her. It doesn’t. After waiting some time, the woman grows curious enough to venture into the trees herself, where she discovers an elephant lying on its side, bleeding from three bullet holes aimed at its heart. Although the woman knows wounded elephants are dangerous, death by an elephant suits her aims, so she approaches it. The elephant, though still alive, glances at her briefly and seems unbothered, so the old woman lies down against the creature’s massive head.
The elephant—not the old woman—represents Sopeap. The three bullet holes, leading to her heart, represent the three deaths she has spent the last several decades grieving: her husband, her heroic housekeeper, and her son. The old woman thus seems to represent Sang Ly, who asked Sopeap to teach her how to read even though Sopeap nearly evicted her and her family from their home, even though Sopeap, like a wounded elephant, was ornery to the point of seeming dangerous.
Themes
Before long, their breathing synchronizes together. The old woman traces the elephant’s features with her hands and she finds herself speaking to it, expressing her regret that she can’t ease its suffering in some way. The woman remembers learning that like people, elephants prefer to die in the company of their loved ones, and she finds it sad that this creature lies here alone, shot and abandoned by soldiers. As they lie quietly together, the old woman confesses that she came to this place to die as well. The elephant stirs and shudders as its body begins to shut down.
The elephant’s dying is an obvious parallel to Sopeap’s looming death, and the old woman’s synchronized breathing with it seems to reflect that Sang Ly and Sopeap found themselves drawn together and connected through their mutual love of literature. The old woman’s death, should she allow it to happen, would not represent Sang Ly’s literal death, but her loss of hope in Stung Meanchey.
Themes
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The old woman tells the elephant she is sorry that the creature is dying alone, but as she says it, she realizes the elephant is not alone after all. She is there with the creature, “when comfort and friendship are most needed.” At this, the elephant smiles and exhales its last breath, then dies. The woman sits with the creature’s body for an hour, and thanks it for its presence, since it allowed the woman to feel needed by someone else for the first time in years. She decides that she will not die today, nor will she tell anyone of the elephant. When she arrives in camp, the old woman tells the soldiers she was just sick and relieving her illness in the jungle, and she returns to her labor for the “benefit of the new society.”
Sopeap’s depiction of the old woman providing comfort and companionship in the elephant’s last moments reflects how, though Sang Ly did not realize it, she too offered the first companionship and love Sopeap received in decades. To some degree, this eased Sopeap’s fear and pain of facing her looming mortality, since at least she did not have to face it entirely alone—even if she struggled to let Sang Ly see her fear and pain. The old woman’s return to the camp seems to be a message to Sang Ly to keep hoping and working for the “benefit” of the world around her.
Themes
As Sang Ly finishes the story, Ki and Lucky Fat wonder aloud if the story is true and if Sopeap was the old woman. However, Sang Ly points out that it can’t be, since Sopeap would only have been in her 30s when the story was set. After a moment’s reflection, Sang Ly figures out the puzzle: Sopeap is not the old woman, but the elephant, and just as the elephant was hidden nearly in plain sight if only one thought to look, Sang Ly knows where Sopeap must be.
As Sang Ly astutely realizes, the story about the elephant and the old woman are a metaphor, a veiled way for Sopeap to share her pain and gratitude towards Sang Ly. For someone as closed-off as Sopeap is, it seems likely that alluding to her feelings was the best way for her to be honest about them.
Themes
