56 pages • 1 hour read
Adam JohnsonThe Orphan Master's Son
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: The Confessions of Commander Ga
Chapter 5 Summary
One year after Jun Do’s arrival at the prison camp, a nameless interrogator is questioning a subversive professor when he receives news that Commander Ga has been apprehended and is in custody. Excitement flows through the building; Commander Ga is an important person, praised for his conquests, including his marriage to Sun Moon. However, it is rumored that the person they have captured is only an imposter and not the real Ga.
There are two groups of interrogators within Division 42, the old-school Pubyok, who are fond of breaking hands and using torture to get prisoners to confess, and the group to which the narrator belongs, who prefer to use “sharp minds” as their “interrogation tools” (180). His group puts together a biography of the prisoner’s life, from his earliest memories to his greatest achievements because “when you have a subject’s biography, there is nothing between the citizen and the state” (181). The interrogator presents the professor with his biography, and although it looks like things will go well for the professor, he is then hooked up to the “autopilot”, a torture device which dispenses electrical current in increasing doses. The effect of the electricity will be to separate—figuratively speaking—the professor from his brain.
The Pubyok interrogate the imposter Ga, beating him badly. He is questioned about Sun Moon and her children, who are rumored to be dead or missing. The imposter Ga seems to be Jun Do—his fingers are restlessly typing, he has a tattoo on his chest of Sun Moon, there is a large scar on his arm, and he has a pair of black cowboy boots. All the imposter Ga reveals is a story of driving an American car with Sun Moon.
The interrogation ends for the day and the narrator returns home to cook dinner for his parents, who greet him as loyal subjects of the state. Later, reflecting on the imposter Ga’s story, the narrator returns to Division 42, wakes up the prisoner, and asks if the memory of riding in a car with Sun Moon was a scene from a movie. He figures out that the imposter Ga used to be a prisoner, since the real Ga was the Minister of Prison Mines. He asks, “What could the Minister have done that was so bad you killed him and then went after his wife and kids?” (190). The imposter Ga doesn’t answer, so the interrogator takes a sedative and goes home.
Chapter 6 Summary
In this short chapter, the imposter Ga remembers the movie where he first saw Sun Moon. She played an abalone diver, and in one memorable scene she took a deep breath and rolled off the raft into the dark water. He remembers watching the movie projected onto the side of the prison infirmary on February 16, Kim Jong Il’s birthday and the only day off work all year. It was desperately cold that night, and Mongnan saved his life again by leading him to a burnt out searchlight. They gathered the moths that had fallen under the light and ate them. It was the first time his stomach had been full since returning from Texas.
Chapter 7 Summary
The transcript of a short broadcast begins with “Good morning, citizens!” and then issues reminders to North Koreans. The winner of the year’s Best North Korean Story will be announced soon. It promises to be “a true story of love and sorrow, of faith and endurance, and of the Dear Leader’s unending dedication to even the lowliest citizen of this great nation” (193).
Chapter 8 Summary
The next morning, the interrogators take the imposter Ga to the cafeteria and question him while he wolfs down his food. They ask again about Sun Moon and the children, and the prisoner replies, “You’ll never find them…. I don’t care what happens to me, so don’t bother trying to make me tell you” (195). He agrees to tell them the rest of his story, provided they answer a question for him. The Pubyok are furious that a prisoner has made such a demand, but the narrator tells the imposter Ga to continue.
Ga tells them about surviving a bitterly cold winter in the prison and nearly giving up the will to live. He listened to another prisoner, Duc Dan, call out an endless series of questions while he was dying in the infirmary, and felt compelled to try to answer him. But the Pubyoks have had enough; they stop the interrogation abruptly, saying that the prisoner is lying about Duc Dan, and drag him away to be tortured.
Chapter 9 Summary
The narrator files emergency paperwork to stop the Pubyoks' interrogation, but by the time he succeeds, Ga has already been put through a round of electric shock treatment. The Pubyok are frustrated with what they learned during the interrogation. The imposter Ga wouldn’t talk—even under extreme torture. They are trying to understand what he said about Duc Dan; a former colleague who they believed had retired and was living on a beach. The imposter Ga’s story made them realize that neither Duc Dan nor any of the other retired interrogators has ever sent so much as a note to their former colleagues.
The narrator returns to the imposter Ga, who is still feeling the effects of the electric shock treatment. The interns suggest that Mongnan be located and brought in to talk to him, but the imposter Ga says that she is dead. In order to bring him back to a state where he can be questioned, the narrator asks Ga to tell them his earliest memory. What Ga tells them is a story that is often told to orphans.
The interrogators fulfill their end of the bargain and allow the prisoner to ask his one question. Gesturing to a can of peaches on the table, he asks, “Are those my peaches?...Or your peaches or Comrade Buc’s?” (208).
One of the interns, Jujack, recalls that he has seen the name Comrade Buc on an ankle bracelet of a prisoner in the camp.
Chapter 5-9 Analysis
Jun Do didn’t die in Prison 33—he survived, and a year later, has resurfaced, posing as Commander Ga. From the interrogations and his own private ruminations, the reader learns about his time in prison, including the debilitating cold, the starvation, the injustice of his situation and the kindness of Mongnan, who taught him to survive. When he does talk to the interrogators, the new Ga tells beautiful, fanciful stories, believing that such stories will help him to survive.
Through the nameless interrogator/biographer, the reader gets a glimpse of the other side of the equation—of men and women conditioned and trained to get the confession out of the prisoner, no matter how mundane the offense. The interrogator’s own life is bleak. He takes a sedative to escape the realities of his home life, including his two aging parents who are devoted to the state. The old guard, the Pubyok, beat and torture confessions from prisoners, expecting that they will one day be rewarded with a pleasant retirement on a beach. But as the Captain told the crew of the Junma, there is no beach full of retirees. What’s waiting for the interrogators is the same horrible fate as the prisoners they have tortured.
At this point, it’s not clear what has happened to the actual Commander Ga or to Sun Moon and their children. The national broadcast suggests that one version of the Ga/Sun Moon story will be told as the Best North Korean Story, while another version will be told by the imposter Ga at Division 42.
