49 pages • 1 hour read
Bapsi SidhwaIce Candy Man
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
The entire Sethi family attends a speech by Master Tara Singh at Queen’s Park. He incites the Sikh crowd to violence against the Muslims and Hindus. That night, appalling violence erupts in Lahore, along with many fires. From the rooftop of Ice-candy-man’s tenement, Lenny witnesses a man being pulled in half between two jeeps and a little girl spitted on a pike being waved in the air like a flag. Masseur arrives and comforts Lenny that he will make sure they get home safely. Ice-candy-man is exhilarated and jubilant at the violence. He and the explosive fires, violence, and blood terrify both Ayah and Lenny.
When she gets home, Lenny tears her doll apart to see what happens; she then cries hysterically.
Fires, mobs, and explosions now occur on a nightly basis. The Shankars, who live in the back part of the Sethi’s house, flee in the night to India. Lenny imagines that Lahore has burned for months, but as the adult narrator, she also knows upon reflection that it could not have burned for as long as she remembers.
Chapter 17 Summary
It is Lenny’s eighth birthday: August 11, 1947. To Lenny’s annoyance, no one pays much attention to her. Pakistan is born the same day. The country is officially divided. Lenny celebrates her birthday at Cousin’s house while they listen to the radio announcing Pakistan’s birthday. Cousin kisses Lenny on the lips and also tries to make a fuss over her to celebrate her birthday.
Chapter 18 Summary
At the Singhs’, next door, Lenny’s mother and the Singhs discuss the fact that all of the Hindu families on their street, Warris Road, have fled Pakistan. The group of Ayah’s admirers still gathers, but in the Sethis’ backyard or on the Shankars’ abandoned porch. The Ice-candy-man arrives with terrible news: a train full of Muslims from India arrived at the station. Everyone on the train had been killed. There were no women’s bodies, only sacks full of breasts. No one wants to believe it, but Ice-candy-man’s stricken, grieving face tells them it is true. He had relatives on the train.
The nightly crowd dwindles until it consists only of Masseur. Even the Ice-candy-man is missing.
Chapter 19 Summary
Adi discovers that there is a double-barreled shotgun in the black box, which has now returned to the bathroom. He takes Lenny to see it. They drag the gun outside and take turns guarding the house while holding it. When their father returns, he slaps Adi for the first time in Adi’s life. The gun disappears from the bathroom.
Ice-candy-man swaggers into the Sethis’ backyard full of bravado. He admits that he committed atrocities during the latest violence: throwing gasoline bombs into the homes of Hindus and Sikhs. He is proud of every family that he has helped drive from Lahore. He wants vengeance for the trainload of murdered and mutilated Muslims. Lenny sees him, “bloated with triumph . . . and a horrid irrepressible gloating” (167).
All of the Hindus are fleeing Lahore or converting to Christianity or Islam. No one dares to stay a Hindu in the new Pakistan.
Chapter 20 Summary
The Singhs next door have left Lahore, along with the Government House gardener, as waves of poor Muslim refugees enter the city. Lenny’s adult narrative voice states: “Within three months seven million Muslims and five million Hindus and Sikhs are uprooted in the largest and most terrible exchange of population known to history. The Punjab has been divided by the icy card-sharks dealing out the land village by village, city by city, wheeling and dealing and doling out favors” (169). The politicians at a national level also wheel and deal over governmental leadership and structure. Jinnah, a Muslim, loses favor over Nehru, a Brahmin Hindu. Having lost favor, Jinnah never regains it, while Nehru rises higher and higher. Lenny’s mother shows Lenny a picture of Jinnah’s deceased wife: she was a beautiful, intelligent, young Parsee woman until her premature death at age 29.
Chapter 16–Chapter 20 Analysis
During these chapters, Lenny grows up while seeing terrifying things happen, including the piking of a little girl who appears to be looking at Lenny in mute supplication to end her suffering. As Lenny turns 8 years old, the country of Pakistan is born. As with the narration that begins when Lenny is 4 years old, the voice of the narrator is much more mature than the conscious observations of a child could realistically be.
While this narrative maturity assists the reader in understanding the complexity of the social, emotional, and psychological effects of the tremendous upheaval of Partition and its roots in the seeming harmony of the diverse ethnic and religious groups within Lahore, some readers may see Lenny’s impossibly mature emotional and psychological knowledge as a flaw in the novel.
Indeed, the inconsistency of the blended voices—Lenny as an adult ascribing thoughts and understanding far beyond her years to herself as a child—is used at times to jar the reader out of the story. For example, when Lenny witnesses the changes she sees in Ice-candy-man, she describes them in language far beyond the capability of a 7-year-old child: “The longer I observe Ice-candy-man the more I notice the change wrought in him. He seems to have lost his lithe, catlike movements. And he appears to have put on weight. Perhaps it’s just the air of consequence on him that makes him appear more substantial” (167). This statement and the observations, including the language, seem far more appropriate to a teenager or an adult. Some readers may find the narration hard to credit or to find authentic due to the unbelievable maturity of the child Lenny’s recollections.
During these chapters, Ayah chooses her favorite suitor, disappointing the Ice-candy-man. He begins to stalk her, obsessed with her other relationships, particularly with Masseur. His jealousy and odd behavior in following Ayah everywhere begin to frighten her.
On a city-wide scale that mirrors the two newly created nations, neighbors begin to distrust each other, and many Hindus leave Lahore rather than be harassed or killed by the Muslim and Sikh mobs. In India, Muslim communities receive the same treatment. No one is safe.
