The Clay Marble

As the friendship between Dara and Jantu deepens and grows, Friendship and Loyalty becomes an important theme in the novel. Dara’s new friend Jantu also deepens the novel’s association of creativity, nurturing, and resilience with femininity—as previously introduced by the carved crossbeam—by way of her folktales and works of hand. For instance, Jantu takes special delight in relaying, to the other children, a folktale about a male coward (Khong the Brave) who owes his reputation for bravery to dumb luck and his wife’s heroics. She is also an astute critic of the male-led armies fighting endlessly at the border, and lampoons them with a fable about four “deaf brothers.” Her most wondrous creations, however, are ones she makes with her hands out of common fragments from nature. One of these, an intricate mobile replicating the lifelike motions of women pounding rice in sequence, further links female creativity with nourishment, cooperation, and the future. The contrast could not be greater with the feckless, destructive males of her stories—and of real life. As if to crystallize this, her delicate mobile is soon mindlessly destroyed by Chnay, a macho, pestering bully.

After this, Jantu consoles Dara with another creation, one built to last: a solid sphere of clay. A sphere is the strongest of all possible shapes, but Dara is dismayed by its simplicity in contrast with the clockwork-like mobile, until Jantu tells her it is “magic.” Dara, who believes Jantu’s talented hands really do contain magic, begins to cherish this “magic marble.” For most of the novel, this marble and a second one Jantu makes serve as a kind of placebo for Dara, letting her believe she is being helped by magic, until she learns to believe in herself. Later events show that Jantu is wise beyond her years, and knows how to coax others into finding their own inner Hope and Courage in the Face of Adversity.

This theme continues through Jantu’s fearless devotion to the future. When Dara says she wishes they could go on like this forever, living at the refugee camp and making toys together out of clay, Jantu (who is an orphan) argues that they must keep moving forward, keep building—not just clay things, but things that last. Their families are broken, she says, and to survive, they must build them up again, make them “grow.” Dara sees the truth of this, how it was never physical things (like a house) that made her feel most secure, but “being part of a family as a gently pulsing whole” (47). Jantu erects a shelter of palm fronds beside the stone crossbeam—the symbol of female creativity and the stability of family—and, in its shade, envisions a future for the two of them in a big farm in Siem Reap, home of their future extended family. Molding the clay figures, she hunches over them protectively, like a “hen” hatching her eggs—slowly birthing the future. For now, the two girls’ plans are only dreams, as fragile as the mud from which they were made. Making dreams come true, Jantu says, takes patience and perseverance, as well as banishing grief and fear from your mind.

However, The Effects of War on Civilians are never far away. Just days later, bombs shatter the tranquility of the Nong Chan camp and the two families must flee, with thousands of other refugees, to the Thai border. In the milling crowd, a lost little girl clutching a doll hints at the terrifying fate that could befall any one of them in the chaos of the mass exodus. It also foregrounds the special vulnerability of civilians, especially women and children, in war. Indeed, while trying to salvage food for their families (a traditionally female role), Dara and Jantu are separated from them by an exploding shell, which injures Jantu’s baby brother. To care for the baby (again, a female role), Jantu must accompany him to the hospital, leaving Dara to make the dangerous trip back to Nong Chan, all alone, to find their families.

Rolling Dara another “magic marble” to give her Hope and Courage in the Face of Adversity during the journey, Jantu posits the molding of clay as a metaphor for shaping life itself: As she smooths the clay into a perfect ball, she tells her friend, “we’ve got to do the best we can, out of what we’ve got” (69). This foreshadows her revelation toward the book’s end that the only magic in the marble was in its “making.” Like the toy village left behind at Nong Chan, the clay ball is only a sort of dream that helps to focus one’s willpower, which must come from within. At this stage of the story, Dara still believes in its magic, and holds the marble tightly in her hand as she sets off on her lonely journey.