Never Fall Down Sparknotes

“You show you care you die. You show you fear, you die. You show nothing, maybe you live”(McCormick 53). These are the words of 12 year old Arn Chorn-Pond in his story of life in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, brought to us in gripping detail from the book Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick. Never Fall Down brings the life of Arn Chorn-Pond, a boy from a village in Cambodia into the public eye for all of us to see. Arn’s village was seized and harassed by the Khmer Rouge, then taken and enslaved to work the land and die of disease. Arn’s torture is changed however when he volunteers to be part of the Khmer Rouge’s musical group, where he meets friends that will help him while he strives to survive the war and stay numb to the killing. Throughout …show more content…
Arn uses this fatherly relationship with Mek to cope with the killing and horrible things that are going on around him in the story. “When I come to Mek building that night he look afraid, like he see a ghost. He pinch me, pull my hair to make sure I’m real boy. Then he grab me and hold me close. We go to sleep like before like father and son; but I think in his nightmare, Mek is crying”(McCormick 92). In this passage, we can tell that Arn goes to see Mek so that he can have some sort of fatherly figure, this interaction helps him cope with the terror and violence he …show more content…
This is shown many times in the book “The other boy, he vomit. But me, I feel crazy, like all of a sudden my blood is electric; and I shoot and shoot and shoot. Only shooting, no thinking. No fear, even”(McCormick 120). This fight, this tiger inside of Arn is so powerful that it continues past the fighting, it sees him to the very end up until he shares his story with the world. The tiger in Arn helps him so much, sets him apart of the other kids and helps him survive the terrible things that happen all around him all the time, it makes him numb and helps him