A Wish in the Dark

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-10

Chapters 11-17

Chapters 18-26

Chapters 27-36

Chapters 37-49

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

Nine-year old Pong, a resident of Namwon Prison, knows that life isn’t fair. Because his mother was a prisoner at Namwon when he was born, Pong must spend his childhood at the “reform center” until he reaches the age of 13. The government of their city, Chattana, believes that children born to criminals will become criminals themselves without intervention. Namwon is a miserable place where the oldest and biggest children abuse the younger ones while the guards turn a blind eye to the violence. Pong and his best friend, nine-year old Somkit, are at the bottom of this pecking order and find solace in one another.

At the center of Namwon’s courtyard lies the mango tree with its sweet, tantalizing fruit. The children of Namwon fixate on the tree, desperate for just one of its fruits. They are not allowed to climb the tree and must wait for the mangoes to fall by themselves. But by the time they do, it’s usually too late; the mangoes are already rotten. Pong possesses a unique aptitude for observation, and through careful study he can pinpoint the ripest mangoes and predict the precise time of their falls.

The novel opens on one such day. Somkit stands in position underneath the mango tree and, at Pong’s signal, catches the indicated mango as it drops from the tree. Unfortunately, two of the oldest girls spot Somkit and intend to take the mango by force. Somkit, who fears confrontation, wants to concede the fruit, but Pong, who cannot abide injustice in any form, rescues his friend, and they flee from the girls. Pong and Somkit eat the mango as they run; as the sublime taste of perfectly ripened mango touches their lips, even passive Somkit admits that the beating they will receive will be worth it.

Chapter 2 Summary

Later that evening, Pong and Somkit admire the light orbs that illuminate the city of Chattana across the river from the prison. The orbs come in varying colors, and each one is created by the Governor, the city’s leader. The Governor rescued Chattana from a time of great darkness several decades earlier with his ability to generate light from his hands. To Pong, the brightness of the city represents a fairer world. Chattana’s light does not reach the prison, and Pong wonders to himself how the goodness of the outside world—which Pong imagines must be a fair, just place, unlike Namwon—could ever find them through the darkness. Somkit comments that Pong doesn’t know when to stay silent; according to Somkit, passivity is often necessary to avoid punishment. But Pong finds it impossible to ignore injustice; it gives him a burning feeling inside that drives him to act every time.

Pong learns that the Governor is visiting Namwon next week. Although Pong is familiar with the Governor only through his picture in a book, he feels certain that the Governor understands fairness and will improve the situation at Namwon. Pong secretly dreams that he will one day stand at the Governor’s side and assist in widespread societal improvement, too.

Chapter 3 Summary

Nine-year old Nok Sivapan, daughter of prison warden Sivapan, prepares for the Governor’s visit to Namwon with the rest of her family. Nok secretly prays that her father will represent himself well in front of the Governor; Warden Sivapan is often lenient with the prisoners. Nok’s younger twin sisters, Ploy and Tip, refer to Namwon as a “prison,” and Nok corrects them: It’s a reform center. The children born there would otherwise end up on the streets because their mothers are in jail. Tip and Ploy repeat an aphorism they learned from their mother: “Trees drop their fruit straight down” (14). The significance of this saying, Nok explains to them, is that criminality is in the children’s blood; because of their parentage, without intervention, they would inevitably become criminals.

The Sivapan family descends to Namwon’s river gate, where they welcome the Governor’s procession. As the Governor disembarks, Nok recalls his role in Chattana’s history: Long ago, Chattana was a place of magic and wonder, but once the city industrialized, magic dwindled to extinction as the people’s greed and desire for profit prevailed. Eventually, the great fire burned everything down, leaving few survivors; subsequently, Chattana became the City of Ash. It was then that the Governor came down out of the mountain forest with something the people had not seen in a very long time: magic. With his power to generate light from his hands, the Governor created the light orbs that power everything in Chattana. Life was restored to Chattana thanks to the Governor’s magic, and he is regarded as its savior.

Chapter 4 Summary

Warden Sivapan formally welcomes the Governor to Namwon. Nok wishes fervently that her father will successfully deliver his prepared speech, but Warden Sivapan stumbles over his words, visibly sad at the sight of the gathered prisoners. Nok’s own formal greeting to the Governor doesn’t go as planned; she’s distracted by the sight of a prisoner boy—Pong, unbeknownst to Nok—attacking a couple of older girls who spilled the food of another boy—Somkit—on the ground. The Governor approaches Pong and warns him that he must be careful of falling into darkness; according to the Governor, Namwon was intentionally built away from the lights of the city as a reminder to the prisoners that “light only shines on the worthy” (23). The Governor gifts Pong an extemporaneously created orb that is gold, the most valuable color. Nok witnesses the Governor whispering some final words in the boy’s ear; when the Governor pulls away, the light in Pong’s gold orb has gone out.

Chapter 5 Summary

Pong is distinctly changed after his encounter with the Governor. His dreams are crushed and his worldview fundamentally ruptured, all because of the Governor’s final whispered words: “The world is full of darkness, and that will never change. Those who are born in darkness always return. You and I will meet again” (28). Pong no longer believes in the lights and brighter future that await him outside Namwon; in fact, he notes that the light orbs only make Namwon look darker now.

Somkit persuades Pong to help him steal some sweet durians from the guards to lift Pong’s spirits. Although durian peels are nauseatingly noxious, the fruit itself is sweeter than any other. As Somkit scampers off to distract the guards, Pong is overcome by a sudden, desperate urge for escape and climbs inside a trash bin piled high with discarded durian peels. The garbageman hauls the trash away with an undetected Pong inside. Pong suddenly realizes the gravity of his choice and regrets leaving without Somkit.

Chapter 6 Summary

As the garbage boat sails through Chattana, Pong marvels at the beauty and clamor of the East Side of Chattana, with its multicolored lights and its crowds of people and activity. The city is made up of canals that border buildings built in a stack, one on top of the other. The East Side is powered by orbs of many colors: violet, the cheapest, for basic low lighting; crimson, slightly costlier, for generating heat and power for cooking; and jade, expensive, for motors and generating energy. The garbage boat travels onward into Chattana’s West Side, which sharply contrasts with the East. There, the buildings are powered by premium, exorbitantly priced gold orbs, and the canals are much quieter and less chaotic. The garbageman unloads the trash at the designated dumping spot in the river. Pong flounders to the bank and weeps as he realizes that he’s finally free.

Chapter 7 Summary

Pong realizes that his prison tattoo from Namwon—a compulsory and permanent brand for every prisoner in all of Chattana—will betray his identity. The tattoos are irremovable; when the prisoner is released, a crossed line is added to the tattoo. Because the tattoos are inscribed by the Governor’s gold orbs, it’s likely that only the Governor himself can remove them. Pong’s unmarked tattoo will announce him as a fugitive to anyone who sees it.

Chapter 8 Summary

Deep in the mountains beyond Chattana, Pong discovers a group cooking mouthwateringly delicious meat over an open flame. The sight shocks him—the Governor outlawed flame after the Great Fire, and Pong and the rest of Chattana regard fire as the most dangerous thing in the world. Salivating over the smell of the meat, Pong follows the cooks back to a Buddhist temple situated off the mountain path. Driven by hunger, he tries to steal a skewer of meat, but one of the cooks catches him. Pong lies and says that the monks gave it to him, just as a group of monks approaches.

Chapter 9 Summary

To Pong’s shock, Father Cham, the abbot (the monk who is the head of the temple), validates his lie. Father Cham takes him back to the temple, where Pong is surprised to find yet more flame illuminating a gold Buddha statue. When Father Cham questions Pong about his history, Pong lies profusely. Pong knows his fabrication is obvious, and he feels angry that Father Cham does not reprimand him for his dishonesty. The weight of Pong’s recent actions hits him all at once; he ran away from prison, he stole food, and now he’s lying to a monk, which is a grievous spiritual transgression. Pong feels that he fulfills the Governor's seemingly prophetic words: He sank into darkness and is now irredeemable. Father Cham is compassionate to Pong, who can’t figure out why the monk has such a look of light and serenity in his eyes. He gives Pong white woven bracelets to cover his prison tattoo, each one accompanied by an odd blessing, such as “May you never get food poisoning from raw chicken” (57). Afterward, he offers Pong a place at the temple.

Chapter 10 Summary

Pong settles into life at the temple, Wat Singh, under the care of the other monks and Father Cham. Pong is shocked at the respect with which Father Cham treats everyone, regardless of rank. Pong is even more surprised to receive care from the adults around him, which is a novel phenomenon for him. Father Cham mentors Pong and constantly tells him that he has a good heart. Despite all this, the Governor’s words still weigh heavily on Pong, and he recounts his wrongdoings to himself every night. He convinces himself that he must amass a mountain of good deeds to make up for his past. As four years pass, Pong feels more and more distant from his former life as a Namwon prisoner.

Chapters 1-10 Analysis

The opening chapters provide exposition and introduce the narrative’s setting and core conflicts. Using a third-person limited perspective, the narration alternates between Pong’s and Nok’s perspectives. While Pong’s point of view is presented in the majority of the first chapters, Nok counterbalances it and juxtaposes the two characters’ environments and beliefs. This establishes them as foils, a literary device that emphasizes thematically significant similarities and differences between the two characters.

Pong and Nok mirror the major relationship of Les Misérables: that of Jean Valjean, the escaped convict, and Javert, the police official who pursues him. When they are introduced, Pong and Nok both have a keen sense of right and wrong, although their conceptions of justice differ. Nok, who was raised in a wealthy family, believes wholly in morality, as decided by the law. Pong, on the other hand, experiences injustice as a prisoner at Namwon and knows he cannot count on authority to enforce fairness. The contrast between the two protagonists’ perspectives establishes the theme of Laws versus Justice.

Chapter 1 opens on Namwon Prison. This setting is a microcosm of the injustice that rules Chattana. Pong’s actions there characterize his goodness and foreshadow his reactions to things he encounters outside the prison. In Chapters 1 and 2, the author juxtaposes the philosophies of Pong and Somkit to establish the novel’s thematic discussion of perceived helplessness against injustice. While Somkit believes it’s better to let things go to avoid punishment, Pong finds that he just can’t do that because injustice gives him a burning feeling in his belly (8). By demonstrating Pong’s reactions to events in Namwon Prison, a microcosm of society, the author foreshadows his response to challenges he faces outside Namwon. This also reflects Pong’s most significant traits: his drive for justice and his willingness to defend his friends.

Chapter 1 opens during a discussion of the mango tree in the courtyard of Namwon; the tree symbolizes the disadvantages its members are subjected to. All the children long for the mangoes; however, prohibited from climbing the tree, they can do nothing but wait for the fruit to drop—at which point most of the mangoes are already rotten. This analogizes their situation: Although the prisoners of Namwon are promised the rewards of a free life once they serve their sentences, those benefits lie just out of reach—the Governor does not intend to share any of his light or the law’s justice with them. The mango tree also offers an important symbolic foreshadowing of Pong’s observational abilities. He is the only child who can spot the ripest mangoes, and he uses this ability to obtain the best ones. Similarly, Pong’s acute sense of injustice, coupled with his sharp observations, positions him to defeat the Governor at the end of the novel.

Fruit is a significant motif in the opening chapters, appearing in both Pong’s and Nok’s perspectives. Aside from the mangoes, fruit is also mentioned in Chapter 3 when Nok’s younger sisters recite the mantra they learned from their mother: “Trees drop their fruit straight down” (14). The aphorism is a justification for keeping the children at the reform center; the government believes that the children’s parentage predisposes them to a life of criminality. The author utilizes minor changes to syntax and diction to create a play on the common aphorism “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” emphasizing the rigid perspective of Chattana’s privileged society. The original saying asserts that the metaphorical fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, suggesting that parental influence often causes similarities in offspring; however, the use of the word “far” implies a degree of inexactitude. By contrast, in the author’s adapted aphorism, there is no ambiguity or suggestion of deviation. By saying that trees “drop their fruit straight down,” the author re-centers the blame on the parent and implies that the children unavoidably repeat their parents’ sins. This aphorism calls attention to the prejudiced ideology behind keeping the children in the reform center.

The changes Pong goes through in Chapters 1-10 establish the narrative’s themes of Redemption and the Light Within and Freedom from Darkness. After the Governor tells Pong in Chapter 5 that he will always return to darkness (28), Pong’s hope completely collapses. Thereafter, the Governor’s words control Pong’s self-image, and he doubts his own goodness (62). The contrast between the hopeful Pong of Chapter 2—the one who dreamed of working with the Governor “to make everyone’s lives brighter” (11)—and the one following Chapter 5 reflects Pong’s developing internal conflicts. These conflicts resolve through the novel’s exploration of redemption and inner light, as Pong ultimately realizes that the freedom he seeks is freedom from the perspective of darkness and condemnation that the Governor imposes upon him.

Chapter 9 introduces Father Cham, an important figure in developing the redemption theme. His encounter with Pong parallels Jean Valjean’s meeting with Bishop Myriel in Les Misérables. Like Pong, Valjean is caught stealing out of desperation and lies about it, but the Bishop validates the lie and gifts Valjean precious silver so that he can use the money to become a better man. Likewise, Father Cham offers Pong compassion and gives him blessings to cover his prison tattoo.

Chapter 10 ends with a brief montage of Pong’s life as he settles into Wat Singh. For the first time in his life, he is in a loving, nurturing environment; however, the author reinforces the grave damage the Governor’s words inflicted upon Pong, as even Father Cham’s words about Pong’s goodness cannot dissuade him of his belief in his own darkness. He feels that “the box [the Governor’s words] had formed around his heart had settled in deep, and when he sat very still, he could hear them in the back of his mind” (62). Despite the changes in his external environment, Pong cannot shake the influence of the Governor’s words; this initiates Pong’s journey to find redemption and freedom from his guilt.