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
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.
“The Epilogue” finally reveals all of Sopeap’s backstory and the reason for her guilt and pain, which drives her alcoholic despair, thus fully establishing the argument that one’s hardened demeanor may be the result of trauma and pain. Sopeap’s life before her loss, before living in Stung Meanchey, could not possibly be more different than it is now, indicating that a tremendous, traumatic change occurred to bring her to such a different state of existence.
Themes
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.
Sopeap obviously has little regard for her housekeeper or her capabilities, and disregards her nervousness about the dangerous walk through the city, a callous attitude which likely contributes to the guilt that Sopeap feels in the present. The heroic act the housekeeper is about to make once again suggests that one’s outward appearance may hide an inner strength, even courage.
Themes
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.
The Khmer Rouge soldier being little more than a boy recalls Maly’s brother, who tried to commit heinous evil though he himself was quite young. Once again, this complicates simplistic notions of good and evil, since the reader is drawn to wonder whether such a young child could fully comprehend the consequences of his actions.
Themes
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 housekeeper’s willingness to sacrifice herself to save Soriyan again defies the assumptions Soriyan made about her, suggesting both that heroes can come from unexpected places and that one cannot judge a person based on their initial impressions. Although Soriyan does not ask her housekeeper to make this sacrifice, neither does she stop her, which explains the guilt she still feels so many years later.
Themes
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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.
Although only days ago Sopeap had an upper class, sophisticated lifestyle, her life becomes a living hell, demonstrating how quickly and thoroughly the Khmer Rouge regime’s chaos overtook Cambodia. In light of such intense trauma, the fact that Sopeap endured at all seems miraculous, and her constant need to drink and forget all that she has seen seems far more understandable. This strongly argues that one’s poor behavior or wretched demeanor are not necessarily the marks of poor character, but perhaps are the effects of severe trauma.
Themes
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 is haunted not only by her own cowardice, but by the fact that a person so fine and heroic as her housekeeper died in her place. Sopeap wrongly assumed that her housekeeper was worthless, just as Stung Meanchey’s villagers largely assumed that Sopeap herself was worthless and vile, demonstrating that the same misjudgment is committed by all manner of people.
Themes
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.
Sang Ly’s total disagreement with Sopeap’s final lesson suggests that, though one can certainly learn lessons about life from literature, guilt, pain, and cynicism may lead them to take the wrong lessons and ideas instead. This misunderstanding can have tragic and destructive results, such as Sopeap’s desire to die alone.
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