The Windup Girl

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 19 Summary

Anderson and Carlyle are drinking at a bar called the Sir Francis when white shirts enter and the owner tells everyone to leave. The white shirts surge through the city as Carlyle and Anderson retreat to the SpringLife factory. Anderson has had trouble concentrating since becoming mildly obsessed with Emiko. When they enter the factory, Anderson realizes that Hock Seng has left. Carlyle and Anderson follow Hock’s his path across hot roof tiles, jump from one roof to another, descend a ladder, and run through a labyrinthine maze of alleys, then catch a rickshaw. The traffic becomes blocked by a white shirt checkpoint. A Thai man argues with the white shirts and is bludgeoned to death. Anderson and Carlyle pass through the checkpoint.

Chapter 20 Summary

In this chapter, the point-of-view of shifts to Kanya, Jaidee’s former co-worker. Akkarat and his men defiled Jaidee’s body, after his death; he was “dismembered, disemboweled[…]with his cock in his mouth and blood on his face, a package delivered to the Ministry grounds” (193). Kanya goes to Jaidee’s place, to gather his belongings, and finds an envelope filled with photographs of suspicious figures socializing with Akkarat. One of the pictures is of Kanya herself. She pockets the picture and feels as if it “now sits in her breast pocket like a coiled cobra” (195). She returns to the Ministry, where General Pracha designates her captain in Jaidee’s stead. He commands her to “make the Trade Ministry bleed, Captain. Get our face back” (196).

Chapter 21 Summary

Emiko stands atop one of the crumbling towers and hears white shirts below. She tries to leave through the exit on the roof but hears them ascending. She blocks the door with a piece of old broom, but they burst through anyway. She stands at the edge of the roof and jumps to a balcony below. She then jumps through multiple glass doors as people scream at her and the white shirts pursue her. She burns up as she descends the stairwell, until the white shirts are upon her. They shove her face into a cold bucket of water and she interprets this violent gesture as an attempt to drown her when in fact it cools her: “All she can think is thank you thank you thank you thank you because some scientist made her optimal, and in another minute this slip of a windup girl that they shout at and slap will be cool” (201).

Chapters 19-21 Analysis

The shift to Kanya’s point-of-view picks up after Jaidee has been defiled and disgraced, turned from the Tiger of Bangkok into a defiled corpse. Kanya also discovers that Jaidee knew about her dealings with Akkarat. This knowledge now shames her. Akkarat is a major antagonist who has championed over one of the main protagonists, and General Pracha seeks revenge. The corps of white shirts seethe with understandable anger at the loss of Jaidee. Trade triumphs over Environment, and this conflict echoes how global warming and climate change have occurred because the interests of the energy industry have ravaged the globe.

The intense warmth torturing the planet also tortures Emiko. In the end of this group of chapters, she confusingly seems to be drowning, though the prose remains ambiguous. Whatever the case, the water that she is thrust into does cool her down, and she expresses a bizarre kind of gratitude for it. Her increasing sense of hope, epitomized by the villages in the North, is also buttressed by Anderson’s obsession with her. Anderson, however, needs to be extremely careful, and he is portrayed in these chapters as being at the mercy of the white shirts and the deception of Hock Seng, among others. Despite the troubles that Kanya, Emiko, and Anderson encounter, the narrative grants them all a sense of hopeful victory as they continue to puzzle through their extraordinary circumstances.