73 pages • 2 hours read
Indra SinhaAnimal's People
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Tapes 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Tape 16 Summary
Elli tells Animal that she has received a letter from America: doctors believe “they can probably help” (246). She asks what he would like to see in America and talks about what life will be like once he stands upright.
At Chunaram’s, Animal says that Somraj thinks the world is made of music and that Elli thinks the world is made of promises, and he asks Zafar if “these worlds fit together” (248). When Zafar says music and promises are as similar as vultures and potatoes, Animal describes how vultures and potatoes are similar. He also suggests that musical notes are like promises because they are always the same distance from each other.
Animal consults Somraj, who says that “[t]he notes of the scale are all really one note, which is sa” (249) and that sa is “bent and twisted by this world and what’s in it, by grief or love or longing” (249). Therefore, “the promise is made by the singer not the notes” (250). Animal suggests to Zafar that the world functions because people keep their promises to do their jobs and that “all these sounds are fluctuating around some great sa that hums constantly in Somraj’s head, by which he tunes the universe” (250). This notion brings tears to Zafar’s eyes.
Animal considers that, since trust can’t be measured, neither can promises, which are built on trust. The most important question is “why people keep their promises” (251). He believes the answer is love.
When Somraj grows feverish in the middle of the night, Nisha begs Elli to help. She is “totally ashamed” (251) for having kept people from the clinic and believes she has “no right” (251) to ask for Elli’s help. Elli tends to Somraj, and the women sit by his bedside as he sleeps. Nisha tells him he has horrible nightmares. The next day, Zafar ends the boycott and apologizes to Elli, saying they have “done you an injustice” (254).
A “time of peace” (255) follows. One day, Nisha tells Animal that her father and Elli are getting married and that, after the hearing, the three of them are going to America for a month so Elli can introduce them to her family. Nisha confesses that she did not want her father to fall in love again.
The city celebrates with a big party. Animal is disillusioned, stating that love is a “charade” and that we “make the most” (259) of happiness because “it never lasts long” (259).
Tape 17 Summary
Four lawyers for the Kampani arrive, and one of their first actions is to meet with Zahreel Kahn. Zafar believes they are going to make a deal to settle so the charges against the Kampani are dropped. He plans a demonstration outside the Chief Minister’s house.
The lawyers are staying in an expensive hotel near the Chief Minister’s house. Zafar assigns people to wait at different locations so they can be watched at all times. Animal is assigned to the hotel, but he walks to the Chief Minister’s house to see the protest. Zafar shouts through a megaphone for the Chief Minister to come out and talk with his people. Police reinforcements arrive, and violence breaks out between the police and the protestors.
The Chief Minister emerges from his house. He says he will “not yield to threats” (267) and that “[n]o decision will be taken that is not in your best interests” (267). Zafar laughs, and the people begin calling questions, accusations, and insults. The Chief Minister tells them go to home and returns inside. Violence again breaks out, and officers beat Zafar.
Back at the hotel, Animal finds Elli talking intimately with one of the American lawyers, who then kisses her and says, “You have done a great job Elli, you can come home now” (271). Animal is devastated thinking that she had lied about hating the Kampani and that “Zafar was right” (271); he “knew the world was evil” (271) but not “how fucking evil” (271). He is conflicted over whether to share this news. One voice warns that if he exposes Elli, she can’t help him fix his back. Another other voice says he “can’t keep quiet about this” (271) and that “you have to live with yourself” (272). The first states that “[i]f life’s taught you one lesson, it’s look after number one” (272).
Animal goes to the factory and climbs to the roof, where he holds the pipe “up which the poisons flew to kill a city” (274). Once again, he imagines that night with its clouds of gas and people dying all around. Through the pipe, he hears the moaning of the dead, who tell him revenge must be taken on the murderers. They threaten him with ostracization and death, but he says he’s “already lost [his] place in the human world” (275) and that they are powerless. He goes home and seeks advice from Ma Franci, but her thoughts are not lucid.
Tape 18 Summary
Nautapa—nine days of scorching, dangerous heat—arrives in Khaufpur. Animal goes to Huriya’s house to find that Aliya is gravely ill. Still angry with Elli, he lets Aliya ride on his back to the clinic. By the time he reaches the clinic, his hands and feet are covered with blisters. Elli determines that Aliya needs to go to the hospital, but when Aliya expresses fear of the hospital, Elli treats her in her home instead. Aliya begins to recover. Nisha tells him to go to Elli’s to be treated for his blisters, but he refuses.
At a meeting in Somraj’s house, Zafar is adamant that they must not resort to violence. Others insist the people are too angry to avoid it. Zafar believes that those who are asking for justice must adhere to the law themselves and that violence will only give the Kampani a reason to label them as “terrorists.” He says the Kampani are the true terrorists, that the people have been killed and injured and that they “don’t know what horrors might yet emerge in their bodies” (283). Someone in the crowd points out the irony of the victims being accused of terrorism.
Zafar suggests they might not win but that “even if those evil ones escape punishment, they will still be just as blood-stained, just as wicked” (283) and that “in their hearts they themselves know it” (283). Animal does not agree: when he thinks of the Kampani murdering his parents, rage overwhelms him.
Nisha says “the government that is supposed to protect us manipulates the law against us” (284) and asks why they need to adhere to the law when their enemies “twist it to whatever they please” (284). Zafar and Nisha argue; Animal suspects they are continuing an earlier argument. When Zafar says he would sacrifice his life, Nisha leaves the room. Animal follows. Nisha tells him she is “not heroic enough to fight other people’s causes” (285) and that the battle will go on forever. She believes her dreams of a happy future are impossible. She confesses to Animal, “Zafar is going on a hunger strike. A fast unto death” (286). At first, Animal doesn’t believe Zafar will go through with it but realizes Zafar does not back down. He is racked with guilt not only about giving Zafar pills that have already weakened him but also about not confessing what he knows about Elli.
Tapes 16-18 Analysis
It is fitting that these tapes begin with Animal pondering the dependability of promises, as by the end of this section the greatest promises made to him appear to have been broken. Animal finds himself questioning not only the meaning of hope but also the power of good to conquer evil, both in the world and within himself.
Hopeful and inspired after Elli tells him doctors in America likely can heal his back, Animal discusses with Zafar whether Elli’s world, which is “made of promises” (248), and Somraj’s world, which is “made of music” (248), can “fit together” (248). When Zafar responds that music and promises have “nothing in common” (248) and that comparing them is “as absurd as comparing a vulture and a potato” (248), Animal quickly explains the ways vultures and potatoes are similar. In his optimistic mood, Animal chooses to see how ideas—and by extension, people—are more alike than different. Similarly, in response to Somraj’s notion that all musical notes are actually sa, merely “bent and twisted by this world and what’s in it, by grief or love or longing” (249), Animal suggests that all the sounds in the world—“auto-rickshaws and blacksmiths, bees, rain and railway engines” (250)—exist because people keep their promises to do their jobs. Though singers bring their own emotions to music, Animal sees in these differences something they have in common, a unifying core. They are the same note, the same promise, the same human experiences.
Zafar’s resistance to the idea that the world of promises and the world of music have anything in common seems indicative of a deeper cynicism, one readers have caught glimpses of before. While Animal tries to find the similarities between two different worlds, Zafar is incredulous, just as he resisted the possibility that Elli was in Khaufpur to help the people. Zafar takes a cautious approach to protesting, warning the people against the use of violence, which will “make it easy for them to say, ‘these people are extremists’” (282). Zafar also acknowledges that “it might be that we’ll never win against the Kampani” (283); though he believes in fighting to the death, he accepts that their only consolation may be that “in their hearts” they know “they are ruined human beings” (283). Animal’s realization that “Zafar was right” (271) about Elli seems to validate his own wariness of hope, shattering his belief in unity: back home, he stares through the holes in the roof at the moon, “think[ing] of all the people in this world who are also looking at the moon” (277) and “wonder[ing] what they are thinking” (277). He thus seeks to regain his lost connection to others.
A battle now wages inside Animal, in which he must decide whether to reveal his secret to Zafar or to pretend he knows nothing to help ensure Elli fixes his back. This battle mirrors, and is spurred by, the battle Animal sees in the world. At the factory, tormented by the dead who demand he help ensure them restitution, Animal bitterly complains that “nothing can you do to the people who took your lives, they will grow fat and we will die and they will build factories above our graves and use our ashes for cement” (275). When we are rendered impotent by the greedy and the powerful, are we beholden to others, or is our only obligation to ourselves? In a novel named Animal’s People, this question—to whom he belongs, whether he represents his people or himself—is perhaps the most crucial. The climax of the novel approaches, when readers will discover whether “the power of nothing” can topple the oppressors and whether the people’s sacrifices are fruitful.
