Brotherless Night

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “The End of Hunger”

Part 4, Chapter 13 Summary: “K Becomes K, Jaffna, September 1987”

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and rape.

K begins his hunger strike. It is all performed on a public stage so that supporters and enemies alike can witness his sacrifice. Sashi stays by his side, though she tries to stay out of the public eye as much as possible. K repeats the Tamil separatists’ most pressing demand: The Indian soldiers must be expelled. The Tigers will not relinquish their weapons, as outlined in the peace accord, and they will no longer tolerate any foreign presence.

K’s version of a hunger strike is extreme; he even refuses water, though Sashi pleads with him to be reasonable. She notes that even Gandhi drank water during his hunger strikes; K believes that this refusal makes his pursuit even nobler. People come from all corners of the country to watch K starve to death. The leader of the Indian forces, with whom the Tamil Tigers discuss their response to K’s protest, refuses to budge. He believes that K’s actions are mere provocations designed to garner sympathy and publicity.

K gives a final speech, wherein he calls for outright war in the aftermath of his death. Sashi cannot believe that he will let himself die—indeed, she senses that K himself wants someone to give him reprieve. K urges her, again, to leave Sri Lanka when he is gone. Sashi is both devastated and resentful of K’s choices: Why would he ask her to watch him slowly die? When he finally dies, after 12 agonizing days, Sashi cannot bring herself to commend him like so many others do. He is only 23, and his death changes very little. It only leaves her and his parents bereft. Sashi concludes that K, in fact, has been murdered—and that she herself might have accidentally been complicit in the act.

Part 4, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Authors, Jaffna, Late 1987”

Shortly after K’s death, Sashi approaches Anjali Acca: She realizes that Anjali and her husband, Varathan, have been writing the Reports that have been circulating throughout the city, detailing the war and its human rights violations. She wants to help them. Anjali cautions her that the work is not only distressing but also dangerous: If they are caught, they will certainly be targeted and killed by either (or both) the government and the militants. However, Sashi will not be dissuaded.

Part 4, Chapter 15 Summary: “Innocent People, Jaffna, Late 1987-1989”

Sashi quickly understands the challenges of documenting the war. As soon as she stumbles upon an unsettling fact, either the Tamil separatists or the government will try to cover up the evidence. She learns how to listen and how to ask the appropriate questions of witnesses and innocent civilians caught up in the war. She also learns how to become even more secretive. Getting caught would mean certain death, perhaps even for her family.

Sashi still works at the field hospital, both as a cover for her other actions and because she still feels compelled to help the wounded. One day, one of her friends is brought in: Two Indian soldiers burst into her house, and one of them was intent on raping her—this has become an all-too-common story—but the other stopped him. After she is treated, Sashi brings her to Anjali, and her friend tells her story once again, this time for the archives. The young woman decides that she wants to report the attempted rape, which is an almost unheard-of request. Afterward, the woman is targeted by slander saying that she has been ruined. Anjali puts in her Report that the woman’s bravery was met only with scorn.

Shortly after this incident, a man with an infected leg wound ends up in the field hospital. He tells Sashi that she has helped him before: It is Niroshan, the young man whom K brought to Sashi at the university several years ago, before she began working at the field hospital. He tells her that he will help her if she ever needs anything.

The war amps up again: The IPKF refuses to leave, and the government and militants continue to trade acts of violence. The civilians are again caught in the crossfire, hiding in their bunkers or sheltering in temples. One of the casualties is the university itself, which is ordered closed in the face of the renewed fighting. Anjali refuses to leave campus, and she speaks to any authorities who will listen about the violence of both the IPKF and the Tigers. Brownouts become common.

Aran arrives at the field hospital one evening to fetch Sashi. It is their mother’s birthday, and he wants her to come home. At home, Sashi is surprised at how much she has missed their love and support. Aran asks her directly if she has been writing the Reports. Sashi lies and says no, though she realizes that her brother will understand why she must avoid the truth for everyone’s protection. Her parents have arranged for both her and Aran to leave Sri Lanka, but Sashi does not want to go.

Part 4, Chapter 16 Summary: “Hospital Notes, Jaffna, October 1987”

Sashi describes the massacre that takes place in October of 1987 at the university hospital. The IPKF, suspecting that the hospital is harboring Tamil Tigers, rush in and begin shooting patients and doctors indiscriminately. The Tigers had already removed their soldiers from the hospital, leaving the innocent—including the doctors, like Sashi—to die. Eighty-seven people are slaughtered, though Sashi survives.

Part 4 Analysis

After experiencing the untimely deaths of her brothers and witnessing the senseless death of K, Sashi begins to assume responsibility for her place within this history and for her identity as a Sri Lankan. She chooses to do this by Reclaiming Authority by Preserving History—she speaks to civilians and witnesses and documents the violence and atrocities of the war. She says, “I had thought that I couldn’t keep track of the violence in which we lived, but in fact it was possible; the authors of the Reports had done it” (261-62). By joining them in this endeavor, she attempts to make sense of her individual experiences and preserve the war experiences of the Sri Lankan people for posterity. This is how she fights the propaganda, saying that she wants to preserve the truth: “Not the government’s version and not the Tigers’ version. Not the Indian version. [Theirs]” (263). To Sashi, writing is not only an act of truth telling but also an act of self-preservation; it is a way for the victims of the war to assume agency over the violence that threatens to engulf them all.

Sashi’s writing stands in stark contrast to all the other ways in which war silences civilians. They are caught in the endless cycle of attack and retaliation among the warring forces and have no voice in the conflict. Sashi elaborates, “Again we gathered at temples. Again we were afraid to stay at home, again we were afraid to go out. Again we assessed what we should carry with us when we fled” (273-74). The repetition of the word “again” shows that this life of fear and displacement has become their norm and that they are buffeted about by the nightmare of history. The unfortunate ones are silenced by death, like Sashi’s colleagues in the hospital massacre in October 1987. Since Sashi survives while many others do not, she is compelled to tell their story.

Sashi’s decision to take back her agency is inspired by K’s decision to go on a hunger strike and his eventual death. While K feels moved to undertake this sacrifice for the good of the movement—and Sashi feels obligated, albeit reluctantly, to support him—K becomes a tool of propaganda and is reduced to a symbolic sacrifice. Sashi notes the performative nature of his very public death, saying that “K began his hunger strike on a stage that the Tamil Tigers had built especially for him to do so” (243), revealing how he was a pawn. What was once considered a sacred act in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi has become profaned by the propagandists from all sides, with the Tamils presenting K as a martyr and the Indians labeling him a provocateur. Sashi, for one, will not accept the elevation of K; she says, “I can tell you that at the moment of his death K was still an ordinary man […] His dying made him no more saintly than he had been in life, which is to say not very” (254). He was barely an adult and sacrificed himself for a brutal cause; his death will mean very little beyond its grotesque circumstances. After his death, Sashi understands that her silence is akin to complicity; ultimately, she believes that K’s death is an act of murder and that she allowed it to happen. In the wake of this event, Sashi embarks on a quest for the truth, regardless of the costs.