Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick: Cambodia's Auto-genocide

            Patrica McCormick's newest novel, Never Fall Down, is a fictional account of Arn Chorn-Pond's story of survival in the "Killing Fields" of Cambodia.  The excerpts on the book's hard-cover jacket reveal the problem of historical fiction. Reviewers such as Peter Gabriel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Luong Ung, review not McCormick's characterization of the protagonist but the actual survivor; not how music saved the character's life or provided opportunities for human generosity, but say  Arn is "one of the most gentle and inspiring people I have ever met" (Gabriel). And here we see one problematic of this genre, a genre which actually has potential to highlight what a "novel" can do that an "autobiography" or a "biography" cannot. In these quotes, we see readers conflating the survivor's story from the narrator's story in what McCormick makes clear is a novel. While the authorial strategy to use child's point of view is powerful, it offers a subject for critical review.

An article by Sarah D. Jordan, "Educating Without Overwhelming: Authorial Strategies in Children's Holocaust Literature" (2004) offers some insight as to how McCormick negotiated fictionalizing a historical account of the Cambodian genocide (1975-9). While I hesitate and do not actually intend to compare the Holocaust to genocide, as some research suggests there is a distinct difference, there is no critical body of work about young adult genocide literature as there is "Children's Holocaust Literature."  Jordan reviews several works of fiction about the Holocaust in her article and discusses the strategies used by authors to educate their readers without overwhelming them with "highly emotional information." Jordan's concern here is with the use of "sensitive and age-appropriate literature" as method in educating children about the Holocaust. It is here that I am interested in Jordan's work. As an English teacher, I do think that literature is a form of art to be appreciated for its aesthetic value but I also think that this art has pedagogical potential to not only teach about something but enact the problematic of trying to teach about something. What I mean is that literature is a narrative that accounts for voices and experience while inevitably leaving gaps for the reader -- spaces that cannot actually be known or accounted. Teaching and learning is always partial knowing (Kumashiro's Against Common Sense) and not this myth of having the facts and testing what is the right answer.

Baer (2000) firmly believes that "we" must teach children about the world's atrocities to provide children with a "framework for consciousness" and is that not a powerful ideological stance for all teachers in this post-Holocaust world?  How can teacher contextualize the atrocities and construct this framework  for making moral choices and taking personal and social responsibility. Bauer, however, makes explicit that this is, indeed, a paradox to try to make known something that is beyond knowing or understanding.

Jordan suggests that an authorial strategy, and for our purposes I would like to consider the author as a teacher, is to use a fictionalized first person account from a child's point of view. In doing so, the young reader will be able to take on "for a moment, the perspective of a child who lived during the Holocaust and perhaps begin to address their own question of what it was like and how it could have happened" (200).  While Jordan cites Totten  as saying that literature can help personalize history as way of facing inhumanity in a human way, she  neglects to note that Totten also says that it may not be appropriate; in fact, it is insufficient to seek empathy for that which is impossible to imagine let alone experience vicariously. Perhaps for this reason Jordan suggests that effective literature about the Holocaust should do much more than edit the graphic details or tell about what happened. What then can novel do?

If the objective is for today's children to identify with children of the past, self-narrated stories that show the similarities in growing up -- interest in ice cream, love of games, being sweet on the cute girl in class, sibling rivalry -- personalize history and make the events  more believable. Furthermore, child narrators often accurately do not know much about what is happening or why,  beyond what they see and experience. In Never Fall Down. Arn, the narrator/protagonist,  talks to us about how he sells ice cream for extra money and how he spies on his rich neighbor: "But one girl in the window, the same age as me, the one with eyeglass, sometime she stick her tongue at me. And now I think maybe I love her a little bit"  (16). He also has some sense of the political unrest in Cambodia at the beginning of the novel: "Truck full of soldier ride down the street shouting in a bullhorn. 'We are Khmer Rouge,' they say. 'We are Red Cambodia.' Also they say the prince is coming back, that all government soldier should come meet him at the airport" (12). But like most of the people in Cambodia at the time, Arn has no idea what the Khmer Rough is planning. As the plan unfolds, Arn learns the rules for survival, and his readers learn, too, but the ignorance does not last long, and Arn begins to piece together what he has heard and what he sees. There is no one there, no adult or omniscient narrator to help Arn,  for Arn to tell the "truth" of what is happening; he must be telling and experiencing at the same time. There is no narratorial or experiential distance in this novel.

I think Arn's account will pose a problem for some educators hoping to use Never Fall Down to teach about the Cambodian genocide because while it is realistic and powerful, it  might overwhelm young readers with its graphic detail, a key criticism in young adult novels. Arn, the narrator, does not edit what he sees for his listener nor does he make any apologies. We know that adolescents mature at different times and different ways, and so while some novels hint at the truth behind details such as mass graves or gas chambers, e.g.,  likening them to piles of dirt or showers, Arn tells his listener exactly what he witnesses, thus allowing his listener to also bear witness (Felman, Testimony):

 In the square I see this new guy, white shorts, no shirt, and six soldier. Also ten guys down on knees, hands tied, all naked, in a row.  The guy in the white shorts, he has a gun with a knife attach, a bayonet.  He point the bayonet at the chest of one guy in the row. Then very quick, he slice the skin and pull out the liver. So quick, so neat, the liver , it stick on the end of the knife. The kneeling guy, he's still living; his liver not inside him anymore -- in front of his face. Crying, only saying,"No, no, no," Then he fall down. (76)

What is the authorial strategy here? McCormick is not allowing Arn to be ignorant here nor veiling the event as some authors of Holocaust literature do to make it age-appropriate (and as Jordan notes). The narrator, Arn, is not unaware nor is there an adult to filter or interpret the details; he presents the event as an eye witness to the atrocities without interpretation. This seems like an authorial risk for McCormick. Jordan's selections for Holocaust literature celebrate texts that do not quite engage with the "harsh reality outside the imagined adventure" (204) keeping the child hidden physically and emotionally from the events to teach about life, death, and survival by resisting graphic images.  I think Arn's narratorial voice, one that is somewhat detached emotionally, is McCormick's strategy for teaching about survival, but McCormick includes the graphic images. Why?

Jordan suggests that the authorial strategy of telling a story from the child's point of view is effective because "their gradual understanding and growing knowledge of what is happening around them mirrors that of young readers" (205). She suggests that children are "largely ignorant of the horrors of the Holocaust and are only slowly beginning to learn of them." While I agree that the child's points of view is an effective authorial strategy, I think that children are eye witnesses or rather bear witness in their own lives and need to share and hear those stories -- imagine all the children living in America who experience cancer, live through a tsunami or hurricane, or even have to face a bully at school. Thus, when children read a first person novel, they see an example of bearing witness, and as listeners, they, too, bear witness. To allow the story of the Holocaust or a genocide to be told as an adventure without proper perspective, to be filtered with misinformation or occluded information, or to always be hopeful  is problematic.  I am thinking more about middle school readers here -- , and I believe Totten would argue that the Holocaust as well as genocide should not be taught in elementary school --  nevertheless, a framework for consciousness (critical pedagogy) cannot be built upon a weak foundation, and I think most teens are capable of grappling with complexity. For really young readers, it may be best to stick to themes of group discrimination but even so, educators must be careful not to present overly simple definitions and solutions to even young readers.

(We will return to Jordan's analysis of allegorical depictions of the Holocaust when we look at Stassen's Deogratias, a graphic novel about the Rwandan genocide.)

In chapter six of Never Fall Down, readers (or listeners) see what I think is a shift in the story that may cause  middle and high school educators pause when considering this as a class novel. (At this point, I am not sure where I stand on this.) The authorial strategy of using the first person narrator as an eye-witness  to the Khmer Rouge's "Year Zero" and four years of methodical murder trying to "never fall down," reports this scene about a "wandering boy" who leaves the hut at night:

I look for him everywhere. By the side of the hut, in the kitchen. I see a light, a small light, in the mango grove. A bad smell there, and sometimes the bodies get bloat and blow up and pop out of the ground. I'm scared of that place, scared of ghost, but I go anyway. 

And I see the wandering boy. I see him crouching, holding arm of a dead guy, chewing. I don't know how long he been doing that, eating the flesh, the human flesh; but now I know why he always asleep in the morning. (87)

khim

While this scene is of the graphic nature that Jordan considers overwhelming for young readers -- and again I am not sure the age range she is considering -- it is essential in moving the protagonist to a realization. Up until this point, Arn has slowly become "famous" in the camp for his ability to sing, play the khim and lead a group of musicians in Angkar songs. He has some power to be out at night because of his "fame," a power of voice to speak up and even save his fellow musicians who would otherwise be killed because of their poor musical skills. But even though he sees this wandering boy near the mangrove trees, Arn cannot use his power to save; the image unveiled some truth of humanity for Arn, a hopelessness:  he says, " now I am a ghost."

What is this novel doing, then, that an autobiography can not? Why didn't Arn write his own story, give his own testimony? Why has McCormick mediated his story and rendered it as a novel? It is clear that the first person account is something that a non-fiction book or essay cannot do. What is the value of an listener/artist/author in telling a history?  What does is this novel doing for our understanding of history? Let us take a look at an excerpt to observe the work of a listener/artist/author:

New prisoner coming to the cap all the time. No hiding them anymore. Now the Khmer Rouge take them right through the square. Tie together, head low. They beat them in front of us so we can see what happens to people with bad character. Always the Khmer Rouge watch us, all the time. They watch to see if you show any emotion to the victim. You do, they will kill you. (90).

"These people, they no good," says one Khmer Rouge. "They old; they don't work so hard. They gonna die soon anyway." Then , very quick, he take the ax and hit them in the back of the head. Blood fly everywhere. The wall of the temple, beautiful tile, beautiful painting, now all dripping with blood....Then the Khmer Rouge says to us, "It's time for your job. You pee on them. You pee on their head."  I think: I will not do this terrible thing, I will not do this...But then I look down , and I see the urine coming out of me. (101)

The text resists emotion in its abrupt phrasing, declarative sentence structure, and present tense mimicking the way that the survivors had to act swiftly and resist emotion in order to survive. We witness the body detached from the mind here as though Arn is a ghost detached from his Khmer body.

But Arn is not a ghost, and while he has "acted tough" to survive, McCormicks's authorial strategy is to then juxtapose haunting automaticity of terror with Arn's humanity. Arn is called to a leader's home to play music and later asked to ride a horse to deliver a letter:

Strange thing is happening now. Nice thing. But very strange. Smile on my face. Not fake smile like when we sing song about Angka, but real smile, and laughing. Also wetness on my cheek like rain, but it's tear. For three years, laughing not allowed, crying not allowed. Now, on this horse, I am laughing so much I am also crying. (106).

While this juxtaposition is not one of the authorial strategies Jordan discusses, hope is one of them (as I mentioned above). And McCormick does explicitly develop this theme using Arn's narratorial voice. After the Vietnamese invade Cambodia, Arn takes up arms with the Khmer Rouge; he and his small platoon of child soldiers or "bait" as he discovers come upon a high ranking Khmer Rouge group with a little rice girl: "My little sister, Sophea, ten year old, now like tiny old woman, bent over from carrying the rice sack: (128). While Arn knows it is too dangerous to show that they are family, he goes to his little sister during the night:

Long time ago I kill all hope in myself. And live only like animal, survive one day, then one day more.  Now here is my little sister. My family. Someone who love me. Alive. And I say, " Now I know you are living, I will live, too." (129)

Is this the truth? Did this "happen"?' Can there be this kind of seredipity and hope in a story about genocide? The all-too-famous phrase "Never Again" that followed the movement to prevent and punish genocide after the Holocaust was, and has been,  an empty promise that allowed the Khmer Rouge invasion to escalate to a genocide, and the hope that Arn felt here is just as hollow, for after several more days of wandering the jungle of Cambodia with Khmer Rouge soldiers he came upon his sister's platoon once again. McCormick need not honor Jordan's rules at this point, as a fiction writer, she could wrap up this story with a happy ending where Arn and Sophia make it to Thailand safely, and the find the American dream awaiting them, but she doesn't, and I think this authorial decision makes Never Fall Down authentically rather than didactic, gesturing at the complexity of history and survival and the potential for fiction and young readers to grasp the messiness of history and the need for historical fiction to disrupt the neat accounts we find in textbooks. Instead of the didactic ending of traditional children's stories,  after four years of surviving alone, Arn finds his sister near death and susceptible to abuses much worse than death itself:

Now my hand is on my gun. Because I know I should kill her by my own. So she won't get rape, get eaten by tiger. I touch her cheek and push close her eyes with my hand. I touch the trigger and pray to our ancestor for help, to forgive me for killing this little girl, this only person left for me in the world...but I don't do it. I just walk away. (138)

 While Arn, did make it to the Thailand refugee camp, his story did not end there, and here McCormick further complicates the "neat" storytelling of children's literature. Surviving the genocide was not the end of the story for McCormick's protagonist or for survivors of genocide. They must now survive their survival, and this is where the dramatic and graphic elements that engage many young readers is juxtaposed with a much messier survival set in the day-to-day struggles of coping with past and facing the present and future. Arn makes it to America and starts high school only to face the challenges of learning a new culture and language and unlearning the "tough act" that became his best survival tool. Here Arn is telling his readers about learning English with his "special teacher":

Very important sound this th. But we don't have this sound in Khmer. So my tongue can't do it. But Pat, she say it over and over and over. Get close to my face, closer and closer she get; her tongue, she show it to me, pushing on her teeth, like she gonna eat me. And I spit her. Right in the face, I spit....And I think: why I spit at this person, only one trying to help me? Why I'm so bad? Why? (196)

In  "Author's Note," McCormick talks about her in-depth interviews with the people for whom the characters were named and from whom the novel derived. She says that she crafted a novel from her interviews because of the gaps in the memories of the participants in her research, and she wrote the character using Arn's "own distinct and beautiful voice" to make up for the "light" lost with grammar and syntax. I am not sure if this final authorial strategy works here. McCormick's recreation of Arn's voice distances the reader at first; I think it only works because it is combined with the present-tense narration. Had it been past tense, we would have expected even the fictional character to have improved grammar.  This is most effective in the end of the novel when Arn does not have the language to express to his adopted family the shame he feels for all that he experienced in the camps:

My heart like, like a tiger inside, clawing my rib to get out. So much hate in there it hurt. Hate for the people who kill my family, hate for the people who kill my friend, hate for myself...." Why I live?" I ask Peter. "Why I live and so many people die?" (207)