50 pages • 1 hour read
Dave EggersWhat Is The What
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaBook 2, Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2
Chapter 19 Summary
Julian finally admits Deng to the examination room and then takes him to get an MRI. Julian tells Deng that he himself was mugged not long ago, but was able to fight his attackers, since he had been an Iraq war veteran prior to his position at the hospital. After the MRI, Julian takes Deng to a bed, and goes back to the waiting room to tell the other Lost Boys that they can go home. Before he leaves, Julian asks if Deng fought in the civil war in Sudan. He says no, to which Julian replies, “Oh. Well, good then. I’m glad” (317).
Chapter 20 Summary
Deng was, in fact, almost a soldier, but a massacre saved him. John Garang, leader of the SPLA rebel forces, visits the camp at Pinyudo. The boys make the camp beautiful and welcoming, hailing Garang as a hero. Valentino realizes, after hearing Garang speak, that the purpose of the camp is starting to become to prepare the boys for military service under the SPLA leadership. They are careful to hide this from the UN and aid workers, but the evidence is clear that they are being trained as child soldiers. The SPLA soldiers begin to refer to the boys as “seeds,” and use propaganda to try to radicalize them.
One day, a group of prisoners is brought before the boys and branded as traitors to the rebel cause. The prisoners protest and proclaim their innocence but are murdered by the SPLA in front of the boys. The boys panic, scattering. They cling to adults or run away, and no longer attend rallies after the massacre. Soon after this, the Ethiopian forces drive the boys out of the camp and chase them back to Sudan. They have to cross the Gilo River while being shot at and killed by the government forces and the Anyuak river people, who have long resented the presence of the refugees.
Dut helps Deng and Achor Achor get across the river, but then leaves them to try to save more people, and is never seen again. Deng and Achor Achor travel in the darkness and come across a small child they refer to as Quiet Baby. They care for Quiet Baby until they come across a refugee woman who agrees to take care of the child. The boys end up back at Pochalla, along with many other refugees, sitting around an old abandoned airstrip. Here, the people reorganize themselves, but despair is prevalent and most of their possessions are lost. Achor Achor wonders whether it would be better to simply die.
Chapter 21 Summary
Deng decides to leave the hospital after waiting to be treated for 14 hours. He contemplates suicide, and remembers considering taking his own life during his journey from Pochalla to Kakuma. He had been nearly blinded by an ocular disease, having to cling to whomever was walking in front of him as they marched. The rebel forces had split into two factions, so now there were yet more forces causing death and destruction in Sudan:
So many tens of thousands were lost this way, and the infighting, the brutality involved, allowed the world to turn an indifferent eye to the decimation of Sudan: the civil war became, to the world at large, too confusing to decipher, a mess of tribal conflicts with no clear heroes and villains (349).
Deng then talks about what happened with Tabitha, and how she was murdered by her ex-lover, Duluma, who had become obsessed and angry. Duluma had stabbed her 22 times and then jumped off an overpass, breaking his back but not dying. Deng wishes they had not waited to be together, but had assumed they had more time.
On the march, Deng collapses and waits to die, but a girl named Maria pulls him up and gets him moving again. They walk to the middle of a desert with 10,000 others, and are told this, the city of Lokichoggio, will be their home now. Lokichoggio is a dusty and desolate place. The refugees are there for nearly ten years, “in a place which no one, simply no one but the most desperate, would ever consider spending a day” (363). In his darkest times, he pictures her in his mind.
Book 2, Chapters 19-21 Analysis
Both Julian and Deng have been involved in wars. However, their situations are very different. Julian was in active combat zones in the Middle East, and saw a great deal of violence as a soldier. Not knowing Deng’s situation, Julian expresses his relief that Valentino did not fight in the war. What Julian does not know, of course, is that Valentino had no ability or power to fight, and instead was relegated to the status of victim of circumstance. Julian’s experience as a soldier colors his viewpoint, and he sees those who actively fought as having experienced the worst part of war, without being able to see the tribulations that the boys experienced as civilian targets.
Propaganda is an important tool in recruitment, and has proven itself as a rhetorical tactic for military efforts throughout history. The SPLA visits the refugee camp, working under the radar of the UN and aid workers, because they know what they are doing would be considered immoral on the world stage. They recruit the boys by weakening their resistance through singing songs together and chanting slogans. This provides a sense of identity and purpose, which is something that the boys have been lacking. The only thing that has kept them together is their shared suffering. The SPLA provides a sense of duty and nationalism. Studies have shown that cults recruit people similarly, targeting those without a strong sense of identity and without a group of peers they feel connected with. Just like those cults, the rebels target these youth, knowing they have only to offer a little incentive and in return they can fill their ranks with soldiers.
Ironically, the rebels’ extreme nationalism proves to be their undoing; they overplay their hand and try to impart their bloodlust on the children. They set out to create a division between refugees, bringing in prisoners from Pinyudo. They hurl invective as a rhetorical tactic, calling the prisoners “rapists” and “traitors,” despite no proof of wrongdoing. By instilling a sense of “otherness” in those prisoners, the propaganda machine further isolates the potential recruits from the other refugees. The tension this creates in the book is palpable; however their tactics fail when the lost boys see the grisly murders being carried out and are further traumatized by the violence.
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