67 pages • 2 hours read
Chloe GongOur Violent Ends
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 24-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary
While Kathleen and Juliette plot how to steal the vaccine from the Scarlets for Roma, another worker rebellion begins in Chenghuangmiao. Nearby, a group of White Flowers kills anti-gang protesters. Juliette comments that she used to think Shanghai was becoming hateful, but now believes it has always been so. Marshall spies on Benedikt, pays off many messengers, and returns to the safe house, worried that a Nationalist soldier has recognized him.
Juliette returns to Chenghuangmiao, where the riot is already quelled, to help Roma break into the Scarlet vaccine lab. She shows Roma a pile of the vaccine, which has been made in solid form. It is easily dissolved in water but flammable when solid. The Scarlets intend to put it in the water supply in their territories, mass vaccinating only their people—Tyler’s plan. Kathleen arrives with Rosalind tagging along. Rosalind is surprised to see Roma and resents that Juliette can decide when the blood feud does and does not matter. She leaves for her shift at the club. Juliette goes to distract Tyler, and Kathleen leads Roma into the lab. Unlike Roma, Kathleen clearly sees that Juliette doesn’t wish to harm him. Roma hurriedly grabs papers, and he and Juliette leave while Kathleen takes her turn to distract Tyler. As Juliette and Roma depart, Benedikt attacks Roma from behind, knocking him out. He is going to shoot Juliette, so she tells him that Marshall is alive.
Chapter 25 Summary
Juliette leads Benedikt to Marshall’s safe house. Benedikt is furious that he didn’t tell him the truth, but Marshall explains it was to help Juliette. She didn’t have to save Marshall, and her position is forfeit if anyone finds out that she did. Marshall confesses he has been looking out for him. Benedikt considers confessing his love but doesn’t. The friends embrace.
Roma wakes in the alley. Juliette is gone, but the vaccine is still in his bag. Later, all five monsters appear in Chenghuangmiao.
Juliette returns home, where Tyler, dragging Kathleen, accuses Juliette of summoning the monsters to storm the lab and steal all the vaccines. They seek Lord Cai to arbitrate, but he is at the burlesque club, punishing Rosalind for being the White Flower spy.
Chapter 26 Summary
Juliette hurries to the club, where Lord Cai is having Rosalind whipped. Juliette stops the attack, though Rosalind says she deserves it. She has been passing Scarlet information to the White Flowers, but she won’t reveal Dimitri’s name. If this is what Lord Cai will do to his niece for her betrayal, Juliette wonders what he’ll do if he finds out about her past with Roma.
Benedikt rushes to Lourens’s lab, where Roma and the scientist pore over the vaccine sample. He reports that the Scarlets’ supply was stolen by the monsters. Lourens tells Roma that General Shu is looking for him. They leave the lab, and Roma shoots the Nationalist following them—they learn from a photo he’s holding that he was following Benedikt. Benedikt worries the Kuomintang followed him to Marshall’s safe house.
Chapter 27 Summary
Between the protests and Rosalind’s punishment, hardly anyone at the Cai house cares about the vaccine theft, which makes Tyler antsy. He considers Juliette’s loyalty and wonders if the monsters are under Roma’s control.
Kathleen attends a Communist meeting, uneasy about what happened to Rosalind. She thinks she is not loyal to the Scarlet Gang; she is loyal to Juliette. Alisa sits on the roof of the White Flower headquarters, reading a pilfered file on General Shu. All she learns is that he has an illegitimate son (revealed in Chapter 35 as Marshall). She climbs down from the roof and is snatched. Roma returns home to find Alisa missing and Benedikt accusing Dimitri of being responsible. In his bedroom, however, Roma finds a note from Tyler challenging him to a duel in a week, in exchange for Alisa.
Chapter 28 Summary
Rosalind tells Juliette she betrayed the Scarlets for love but still won’t reveal Dimitri’s name. Benedikt calls Juliette to tell her about Tyler abducting Alisa and the upcoming duel. Juliette seeks out Tyler and tells him to return Alisa; Russian duel protocol allows for an apology rather than bloodshed. But Tyler counters: Either she can serve as his second in the duel, or she can give over the Scarlets to him.
Chapter 29 Summary
Two days before the duel, Benedikt and Juliette meet. Benedikt wants Juliette to tell Roma the truth about Marshall and talk him out of dueling; according to Russian rules, Tyler will get to shoot first, and he won’t miss. But Juliette says she fears that Roma might forgive her, and the hope of being together will kill her and Roma both. Benedikt doesn’t agree; maybe she should hope.
Rosalind escapes the Cai household and makes her way to the White Flower headquarters, where she encounters Roma. She threatens to shoot him but then leaves, distressed.
Chapter 30 Summary
Tyler, Juliette, Alisa, Roma, and Benedikt appear for the duel. Juliette urges Roma to call it off, but he refuses. Tyler takes aim, but at the last moment, Juliette shoots Tyler instead, and then all his men. When a dying Tyler asks her why she did this, Juliette confesses that she loves Roma. Tyler says Juliette only had to choose her own people, but Juliette knows it’s more complicated than that. She apologizes as Tyler dies.
Chapter 31 Summary
As Roma reels in shock over Juliette’s confession of love and murder of her cousin, Marshall appears, adding to his surprise. Juliette, trying to put on a brave face, explains that she had to convince Tyler to save Roma—but it hardly matters anymore. She tries to leave, but Roma grabs her arm as gunfire erupts across the city. It’s March 21, 1927. Revolution has come to Shanghai.
Kathleen leaves the Cai residence to find Tyler, Juliette, and Rosalind, who are all missing as violence between the Nationalists and Communists erupts across the city.
Marshall, Benedikt, Alisa, Roma, and Juliette need to get somewhere safe. There’s a White Flower safe house nearby, but Juliette refuses to go there. Stubbornly, Roma sends Marshall, Benedikt, and Alisa off. He plans to talk to Juliette now, no matter the consequences. Frustrated, Juliette agrees, and they slip away just before the army of workers arrives.
Chapters 24-31 Analysis
These chapters mark the increasing depersonalization of violence as its scale increases. Juliette observes the relative powerlessness of protestors despite the brewing revolution: “[Protestors] calling for unions, for the ousting of gangsters and imperialists […] make their plea, speaking as though it is a matter of connection, of garnering enough sympathy until the tide turns the other way. But […] the city does not care” (241). However, the rising tide of political turmoil has made even the once insurmountable gang power seem small. Even as the power of gang rule wanes, the main characters cannot seem to imagine a world without gangs in it, even if they can picture a future when they are not part of these gangs. When Roma suggests to Kathleen that destroying the gangs may be the only way to end the blood feud, Kathleen is horrified: “That would be unending grappling, rules ousted at every turn or politicians who lied at every moment. No one would be as loyal to this city as gangsters were to it. No one” (250). The changing political climate reveals this characterization of Shanghai as powerful and personified, an uncaring force that nevertheless requires loyalty from its inhabitants and rulers. These factors allude to Fate, Agency, and the Limits of Individual Power.
The scene of the duel highlights the absurdity of placing rules of honor upon the blood feud’s meaningless violence. Tyler designates a trash bag as the mark from which paces are to be measured and uses a novel to keep track of all the Russian rules for dueling, reinforcing the idea that the blood feud is only the play version of the real war that is about to break out. Placing Juliette’s big moment of betrayal—shooting Tyler in the back before he can shoot Roma—on the same morning that revolution comes to Shanghai marks the end of the blood feud as a driving factor for the plot. This is a sharp contrast to Tybalt’s death in Romeo and Juliet, which is the inciting incident for the events that follow to the end of the play. The remainder of the book focuses on the personal—Roma and Juliette’s love—and the global—revolution—but not the midsize conflict between the gangs.
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By Chloe Gong
