The Windup Girl

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary

Jaidee and Kanya capture smugglers of disease-resistant crops, including pineapples, then board a passenger boat. A bo, or bodhi tree, sacred because under this species the Buddha experienced enlightenment, blocks the river, but Jaidee uses his official influence to clear the boat’s way. Always unemotional and unexpressive, Kanya nonetheless laments the loss of the tree to ivory beetles. The tree’s demise signals yet another consequence of global warming and climate change.

The two go to the marketplace to eat. They discuss the prevalence of disembodied spirits they routinely see, presumably unable to reincarnate because their souls don’t deserve the suffering of the material world. Kanya also worries about Jaidee’s safety, since there has been a previous attempt to assassinate him. Finally, Kanya tells him that he should be more willing to take bribes to give to his men, who work hard and feel they receive little compensation. Jaidee reluctantly gives her the bag of money confiscated from the ship and tells her to divide it among his men. Always dour, she expresses gratitude and respect toward him, though Jaidee doesn’t like what he feels compelled to do.

Chapter 8 Summary

Anderson and his colleagues drink at a bar in the blistering heat while he contemplates the bag of ngaw sitting at his feet and thinks about the presence of a valuable seedbank hidden somewhere in Thailand. He distributes the fruit to his friends, which they all eat greedily. They talk among themselves and with others at the bar about the possibility of the origins of the ngaw. The shipper, Richard Carlyle, appears. He offers to work with Anderson on a potentially valuable business deal, but Anderson hesitates. They agree to meet again to discuss the matter in two days and on Carlyle’s terms and territory.

Chapter 9 Summary

Emiko wakes up in the narrow confines of the slum where she lives, goes to the roof, and bathes herself. Raleigh has warned her to walk only at night, since during the day she will be identified as a windup by her gait and movements. She goes to the river, however, since she plans to escape to the North, where the New People villages are. A worker informs her it is much easier by land, but that passage is blocked for her by authorities who will recognize her for the illegal Japanese possession she is. A former soldier, tattooed and with a hand missing, realizes Emiko is a windup, for he has fought windups that served as Vietnamese shoulders. Emiko begs for her life as he puts a knife to her throat. She manages to escape and runs but has heated up to the point of exhaustion. As her attacker approaches, she espies Anderson in a rickshaw and runs up to him for help. Her attacker knifes her multiple times as she “watches the knife descend, a movement as slow as honey poured in winter” (109). Anderson pulls out a gun to shoot the soldier as “heat swallows her” and she passes out (109).

Chapters 7-9 Analysis

The blistering heat of the ravaged global environment mirrors the personal heat of the machinery that constitutes Emiko in these chapters. Anderson and Carlyle discuss business matters as the city’s inhabitants pause siesta-like because at this time each day, the heat is too hot even to move about in.

Carlyle’s business propositions involve the oncoming monsoons, which will mean more water pumps for the city that he owns. However, Anderson is suspicious. Their conversation highlights the amalgam of illegal business dealings and bribes with the fascist authority of the white shirts and generals, along with the nominal reign of the Child Queen. Jaidee and Kanya represent the legal side of authority, yet the city is so corrupt that in order to maintain legality, they must risk their own lives by enraging smugglers by burning their goods while also taking and giving bribes. The presence of spirits that they both see can be interpreted both metaphorically and literally, given the futuristic setting of the novel. This belief also attests to the pervasive presence of traditional Thai religious beliefs in karma, reincarnation, and the presence of spirits too good to be reincarnated on earth, as well as the bo tree, which remains sacred even as environmentally-developed pests ravage it. In a world where wood is scarce, no one will harvest the bo tree for fuel because of the Buddha’s enlightenment under it.

Emiko’s trek to find safety and companionship evinces the great risk she takes. Her attacker’s attempt to kill her signifies the hatred of the Japanese and the way humans flinch at her hypersexual and ugly unnaturalness. Her characterization is one of a simple girl who is the product of a genetic engineering gone mad, made to climax and orgasm against her will; all of those who abuse her render her a touching figure nonetheless. At the end of Chapter 9, she again seems to have found an ally in Anderson, who protects her while all others around her, to whom she begs for help, display disgust and scream at her. The fact that Emiko, as a windup, can bleed, however, also demonstrates how she is more than cyborg even while being less than human. Meanwhile, and at any moment, the city’s walls could collapse and drown the city’s inhabitants.