Chapter 7 Felicity Lawrie

;Jim waits for three days alone in the house for his mother and father to return. He passes the time by plane spotting. Jim plays on the lawn, no longer neatly trimmed, and pretends he is one of the Japanese marines who attacked the Wake. The rest of the time he spends in his mother's bedroom remembering the long hours they spent together doing his Latin homework and listening to stories from her childhood in England (a country he has not experienced). He can still see his mother's footprints in the talc Jim imagines his mother teaching a Japanese soldiers the tango or some other dance. Jim tries out the footprints himself and decides they are far too violent for a tango that he remembers. While dancing around Jim manages to fall over and cut himself on a broken mirror.
The food in the kitchen fridge has begun to smell of rotting. But Jim is able to eat from the pantry which is full of tinned meats and fruit which he loves. On the fourth morning when Jim gets up he goes into the kitchen to find that he has left the kitchen tap on all night and has managed to empty the storage tank. When he thinks about it, he realises his parents are not going to come back. So worries little about it. But to keep his spirits up he decides to visit Patrick Maxted and the Raymond twins.
Smelling of soda water, Jim goes to get his bicycle from the garden. He notices that overnight the swimming pool has drained. Jim gets into the shallow end making his way to the deeper end to fetch a silver coin, which his father has thrown in, but Jim could never reach. Jim kept the coin but found the swimming pool bieng drained quite strange and 'sinister' but still as usual it reminded him of war and the concrete bunkers in Tsingtao. Jim got his bicycle and did something he had always wanted to do and rode it all through his house knocking things over but it made him amused. Then he left of for the Raymond brothers house on columbia road.
When he arrives at the Raymond's house, he asks their Amahs where Clifford and Dereck are. The Amahs ignore Jim and so he tries get past one of them, but he is slapped in the face. Jim leaves in a rush still in shock from the hit and the anger in the amahs face. Jim then heads of to the Maxteds appartment house instead. Once he arrives he goes up to the seventh floor to find their front door is wide open. Jim enters withought knocking to find that every room in the maxted's house was in a mess with drawes of clothes thrown on the floor, like his mothers bedroom. He crept into Patricks bedroom to see his matress on the floor yet his model airplane still hung from the cieling. Jim lay on his matress and watched his aircraft and imagined spitfires and hurricanes. Jim then thought it was time to find his parents. Oposite the appartments was the shells company compound with almost all of it's houses occupied by british employees. Jim cycles his way to the shells company compund to find that it has been overtaken by the japanese. He stands by the entrance and sees Mr Guerevitch. Jim asks him if he has seen his parents but Mr Guerevitch just tells Jim to follow the trucks full of British prisoners and asks him why he is still cycling around on his bike while the war is going on. Jim leaves dissapointed and doesn't follow the convoy of trucks. Instead Jim decides to just head home back to amhurst avenue. Jim decides to give himself up to the Japanese soldiers guarding the Avenue foch but they just waved him off as he tried to speak to them. When Jim arrives back at the house he notices a chrysler limousine parked outside the front door. Aswell as two Japanese officers surveying his house. Just asJim is about to pedal up to them to explain that this is his house and ready to surrender a Japanese soldier from behind him took hold of his bike and threw his through the air where Jim landed in a heap on the dusty road.

Chapter 7 summary - Ash Layer

Jim waits for three day for his parents to arrive. He passes the hours plane spotting and pretending to be one of Japanese marines who attacked the Wake. He soon finds that his games in the ever-growing garden had lost their magic, and he spends most of his time in his mother's bedroom, where he can still see his mother's footprints in the talcum powder. He tries to tell himself that his mother was teaching a Japanese soldier how to tango, but when he tries to follow the footprints, he believes they are too violent for a tango, and eventually cuts his hand on the broken mirror when attempting the tango.

The food in the fridge has gone off, so instead Jim eats from the pantry cupboard. On the fourth morning, Jim awoke to find that he had forgotten to turn off one of the kitchen taps, and had run out of water from the storage tank. Although there was plenty of soda water in the pantry cupboard, he knows that his parents are not retuning. So he decides to leave and visit his friends houses. On the way out, he notices that the swimming pool had completely drained. He wanders towards the deep end, where he finds an English half-crown which he puts in his pocket. He rides his bicycle through the house, before leaving for his friends houses.

When he arrives at the Raymond's house, he asks their Amahs where Clifford or Dereck are. The Amahs do not answer him, and when Jim tries to walk past one of them, he is slapped in the face. He rides off hurriedly, his face still smarting from the Amahs blow. He heads towards the Maxted's apartment, but arrives to find that it had been treated in the same way his house had, with clothes and suitcases strewn across the floor. His friends room was also a tip, and as Jim lay on Patrick's mattress, he knew that he had to find his parents, or failing that, any other Briton.

Jim cycled his way to the Shell company compound, but found that it too had been overtaken by the Japanese. However, he sees Mr Guerevitch, the shell company caretaker, staring at the Japanese. Jim asks the old Russian whether he has seen his parents, but Mr Guerevitch only tells him to follow a convoy of trucks full of British prisoners. Jim does not follow his advice, and cycles back to Amherst Avenue. Jim reluctantly gives himself up to the Japanese, but the soldiers simply wave him away and ignore him. When he arrives back home, he finds two Japanese officers surveying the house. He was about to pedal up to them and surrender, but a Japanese soldier stepped out and grabs the front wheel of Jim's bike, propelling him into a heap on the dusty road.

Character summary by Alexia

Basie

1. Basie is a respected criminal because he manages to gain followers by showing them what he is really like and making them feel important: "Yet Basie's attentive manner...was curiously reassuring." This shows that Basie is kind to others only if it means he will gain something, like an extra worker in this case. He also makes them respect him because he knows that this is the best way to get people to do what he wants.
2. He is manipulative : "Already Jim could see that Basie liked to control the young sailor and was using Jim to unsettle him." This shows that he is clever and can use people how he wants to get what he wants.
3. He tells people what they want to hear so that they will trust him: "Is the war going to end soon?/Don't worry Jim. I give the japs three months on the outside." Although Jim has only just met Baise he feels reassured that Basie is taking an interest in him and that he is answering his questions without asking any of his own.
4. Basie uses people for as long as he thinks they will be worth something for him: "He and Basie had collaborated at the detention centre in order to stay alive but Basie...had dispensed with Jim as soon as he could leave for the camps." This shows that Basie has no emotional attachments to anyone, even a lost and vulnerable twelve year old boy.
5. Basie tries to make the best out of every situation, especially if it means there is something in it for him: "to whatever advantage could be gained from their situation." This shows that Basie doesn't let things bother him as he believes that there will always be something in it for him.

Character Summary by Rachel Granger

Basie

1. Basie doesn’t like work, although he never states this he gets other people, mostly Jim to do the work for in exchange for information or magazines. “For the next hour Jim was busy with the tasks that Basie had assigned him.” The fact that Jim does all of this for Basie suggests that he looks up to him and respects him especially the information he tells Jim about the war.

2. Jim wonders how Basie has come to have so many possessions. “All these had been obtained by barter, though Jim had never understood what Basie gave in return – like Dr Ransome, he had come into the camp with nothing.” From previous knowledge about Basie when he first met Jim and how he and Frank had acquired the gold teeth, this implies that maybe when someone in the camp dies he goes through there possessions and whatever he thinks could be valuable he takes and therefore he does not have to give anything in return. If this is true this shows a sneaky side of Basie.

3. Basie is very clever and manipulative towards Jim. He knows Jim loves the war and in exchange for jobs and Jim’s expanding vocabulary he provides information – “This was the kind of information in which his mind feasted, even know he knew that Basie embroidered the reports for his benefit.” This could suggest Basie is clever but that fact that he still “embroidered the reports for Jim’s benefit” implies that he isn’t as smart he makes out.

4. Although Basie does like Jim he sometimes lies to make Jim feel happier about things. “Are we going to the stadium, Basie?” “Right Jim…” and then he takes Jim’s mine off where they are going to calm him down maybe. This could show that Basie cares more about himself but wants to make other people happy as well.

5. Basie seems to act superior around others as if he thinks he is more important and better than other people. “Somewhere in the camp there was a concealed radio, which had never been discovered … Despite all his efforts, Jim had never been able to track down the radio … Then Basie would supply him with news bulletins of his own describing a parallel war.” The fact that he tells stories of the war suggests he likes to be the centre of attention and the one with the news as if he is the cleverer one.

Chapter 6 - Rachel Granger

As Jim walks home he watches the crowd of people in the city streets, he comments on how it’s as if the whole city had come out into the streets, celebrating the takeover of the International Settlement. He describes the different people he sees: armed soldiers, Chinese gangsters, bar-girls in fur coats with their body guards. He passes a silent crowd watching the beheading of a man and women wearing peasant clothes and states how he thinks the Chinese like the spectacle of death as a way of reminding themselves how lucky they are to be alive.
He then sits himself down on a concrete bench between peasant women carrying chickens in wicker baskets. He noticed he is being followed by a young Chinese – probably a pedicab tout or a runner for one of thousands of small-time gangsters. He says how he knows kidnappings were common in Shanghai and suspected he was after his blazer, leather shoes, aviator’s watch and fountain pen. The youth walks over and reaches for Jim’s wrist but Jim knocks his hand away and sees him draw a knife from his inside his leather jacket.
But Jim runs away before he could seize his wrist again. The youth follows Jim as he runs through the city. As Jim stops near the check-point into the French Concession, the youth grips his shoulders but Jim pulls himself away and runs towards the check point shouting “Nakajima!” He joins the crowd moving through the checkpoint and for the first time realises how the Japanese, officially his enemy, offers his only protection in Shanghai.
He turns the corner into Amherst Avenue and it is deserted. He runs up the street to his drive looking forward to seeing his mother sitting on the sofa in her bedroom. As he presses the bell, he sees that a white stamped cloth with seals and registration numbers has been nailed to the front door.
But the house was empty – no one was in the servants’ quarters, someone had switched off the swimming pool and all the shutters of the air-conditioners had been closed.
He climbs himself up onto the wall and into the garden. He had played many games in the garden. He follows the pathway leading from the servants’ quarters to the kitchen door but it was locked. Beside the kitchen steps was a garbage compactor, a chute which lead into the kitchen next to the sink. He goes through it and shouts to Vera, his housemaid that he is home but no one answers. He walks through the house up to his mother’s bedroom where her clothes were scattered across the unmade bed and an open suitcase lay open on the floor.
Jim sits down on the bed and falls asleep, resting by the scent of his mother's silk nightdress.

Chapter 5 summary

The chapter starts with Jim laying in a hospital bed in the children's ward following his exploits with the Petrel. he is the only one in the ward apart from a young Japanese soldier who is an amateur plane spotter, but only knows the names of two types of plane, and also a smoker.

Jim reflects on what happened with the attack on the Petrel and muses with the thought that it all was like a film and he could believe that the attack would happen in the film but that the real part was sitting for 6 hours on the beach with his father and the dead petty officer.

He is told by a Chinese nun that his father is located in a ward below and how they were honored by soldiers sent by the Idzumo.

Jim wonders whether life will return to normal once the Japanese are in control. he talks to the young soldier who soon decides that aviation is too hard for this young boy to grasp and leaves him alone.

Seizing his chance Jim heads of too another ward via a fire escape but finds that the door is locked. Soldier then come into the hospital and Jim thinks that they are surely looking for him. he escapes into a 'cave like' room full of bandaged men to to be caught by the Japanese soldiers.

An hour later, every one has gone and Jim is told to go home. he is also told that his father has been taken to a prison in Hongkew.n the nun tells him to go home where his mother will take care of him. he grabs his freshly laundered clothes and leaves the Hospital.

by Nathan Giles - Donovan

Chapter 4- Bex Hill

Jim was staying in the hotel with his parents and he was dressed for school and staring out of the window at the Shanghai waterfront. He saw the paper flowers that were placed upon the dead people who were thrown into the water lying in the river. Jim moved to the ledge of the window and drummed his palms on the window. Two japanese picket boats approached the HMS Petrel. Then the japanese boat started firing at the Petrel. He felt it was his fault for starting it because he had done a semaphore in front of the window. His mother told him that he must lay on the floor and that that day would be a school holiday. She also said that she would go to see if Yang could take them home. Grey smoke lay across the water and the Petrel was sinking. Jim, his father and his mother left the hotel and got into their car. They set off along the bund and got stuck in traffic, behind them there was a Japanese tank. His father got out and told Jim to look after his mother. Japanese marines had captured the USS wake and were firing at the british soldiers swimming ashore from the Petrel. His father was helping the wounded soliders. The packard (the car) 'was thrown forward and shaken violently from side to side'. His mother hit her head and jim lay on the floor, they both got out of the car . The tank was ramming another car into their car. The tank was followed by another tank and a line of camoflauged trucks packed with Japanese soldiers. The final rifle shot rang out and the last of the wounded British soldiers were pulled on to the mud-flat below the bund. The japanese soldiers were forcing the chinese and europeans away from the quay and Jim's mother had dissappeared. Jim went down to where his father was covered in oil, holding the skin of from one of the petty officer's hand that had been boiled off. The Petrel exploded and Jim lay down beside his father as the debris reached them. Hundreds of Japanese soldiers were above them on the bund.

Analysis of a Theme - Eleanor Hardcastle

Jim is always unsure of when the war has begun, ended and started again, and he almost always shows a desire for the war to continue and start

1) In the beginning of the novel "Jim devoured the newsreels," that described the war effort and he hopelessly waited for the war to begin in Shanghai and dreamt of its arrival.
2) Once the war has begun he often asks people "Is the war going to end soon?" and I think this is done to show how young Jim is and how he doesn't understand what war is really like yet. Even though he has wished the war to start, he is really to young to know what he wants really and comforts himself by telling others that "The war's going to be over soon,"
3) When the war is nearing its end, Jim finds it hard to imagine life without it, because during war he matured and cannot remember life before it. "He could no longer remember what his parents looked like." and his only possessions (apart from his school blazer which was a "folded memory of his younger self") were ones collected inside the camp which would not remind him of his pre-war life.
4) When it is the end of the war Jim returns several times to Lunghua Camp even though it was one of his biggest struggles to escape. In the camp he feels protected by the Japanese and so he wants to hold onto the war to keep the normality of life and feel this protection
5) When Jim tries to confirm that the war is over, Jim is told by Mr Tulloch that the next will be starting soon. It is a unintelligent remark for Mr Tulloch to make because as he later says "you need to get the last war over before you start the next." but Jim clutches onto that thought and wants to reserve a room for his parents in Lunghua. Even after being taken back to Shanghai by the Bandits, he once again returns to Lunghua to try and restore the camp

I think Jims perception on war throughout the play changes, and that change shows how he matures. At first he doesn't really know what war will be like but he dreams of it and when it arrives he wants it to end. But as Jim grows up in the presence of war he doesn't want it to end and wants the next one to begin, because he cannot remember his childhood without war.

Chapter 3 - Eleanor Hardcastle

Jim left the party in search for the abandoned aerodrome at Hungjao, from which the Chinese had attacked the Japanese army advancing on Shanghai in 1937. As he ran through the fields to the aerodrome he passed lidless coffins. He looked inside at "The yellowing skeletons" each "one an individual" and comments that "these skeletons were more alive than the peasant-farmers who had briefly tenanted [occupied] their bones." I think he says this because he has seen how hard the farmers have to work, almost in human like, so as the skeletons lie peacefully in the sun they are more alive than ever. Jim ran across the rice paddy and into the aerodrome which was "a place of magic for" him and he launched his balsa model aircraft into the air and caught it. He walked through the overgrown field and reached a ditch where the remains of a rusting Japanese fighter lay, most sections had been removed but the cockpit was still there and Jim climbed inside. He imagined the pilot that had once flown the plane, and he pretended to work the controls and peeled off a tape of Japanese characters from the dashboard. He climbed out of the cockpit and with excitement launched his model fighter into the air again, which flew very fast and nearly crashed into a concrete blockhouse. He ran through the fields to get it and noticed the battleground of 1937, where dead Chinese soldiers "sat side by side" in the trenches and Jim remarks that it is "as if the had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war."
Jim climbed on top of the blockhouse to look for his aircraft and when he sees the broken model and is about to jump down he notices that a full armed Japanese soldier is looking at him from the trenches. Jim looked along the trench and realised that it was filled with Japanese soldiers and other camps of soldiers were squatting in earth bunkers and wild nettles. A sergeant strolled past the blockhouse, and at that moment Jim's father came running into the airfield calling for him urgently, trying not to unsettle the Japanese. The sergeant took Jim's model aircraft and threw it into the nettles, but Jim's father told him to leave it and come quickly. They returned to the party where everyone was leaving, Jim was annoyed that he had lost his plane and was surprised to see his father was glad for putting him in danger at the aerodrome.
Back in the Packard, Jim and his family did not go home but instead they went to his fathers company suite in the Palace Hotel. On his way he looked out of the window at the sights of Shanghai and after tried to stay awake to dream of the coming of the war...

Chapter Two - Natasha Black

Chapter Summary

The chapter begins with Jim and his parents setting off for Hunjao - a country district 5 miles to the west of Shanghai - to go the party. Usually Jim's mother would tell Yang to avoid the beggar who stayed at the end of the drive, but that day Jim saw that the front wheel crushed the old man's foot, and he worries about him.
Jim desribes how he is ''fascinated'' by the police at the checkpoint, and he thinks about their guns and how he had found one at home once.
Jim 'felt sorry for the peasant woman' when she had her sack of rice spilt over the floor and her cart turned over.
He doubts - as does his father - that England could ever beat Japan in the war, despite being English himself.
Jim says that the chief attraction of Dr. Lockwood's parties was the disused airfield, and he is relieved to find upon arrival that the party would not be a success.

Character summary
JIM:
1. Sympathetic
- the beggar
''the snow formed a thick quilt from which the old man's face emerged like a sleeping child's above an eiderdown. Jim told himself that he never moved because he was warm under the snow''.
''Jim worried about the beggar'' but his mother reassures him that he was given a warm bowl of rice.
These quotes show that Jim feels sorry for him, and he even tries to persuade himself that the he is okay during the Winter nights, but his conscience is never really settled when it comes to the old beggar man.
- the peasant woman
''Jim felt sorry for the peasant woman, whose sack of rice was probably her only possession''
He is sympathetic towards the peasant woman, but at the same time he feels respect for those responsible for her need for sympathy.

2. Interested in aircraft
''the chief attraction of Dr. Lockwood's parties was the disused airfield''
''He...liked to think of himself as the co-pilot of the Packard''
This quote shows that although there is no aeroplane involved, he likes to think of himself as a 'pilot', and the fact that he automatically uses an aircraft-related metaphor shows that he holds a great interest for real aeroplanes and even the ''balsa aircraft'' that he carries around with him.

3. Has a rebellious side
''Jim doubted if there was any point explaining to Mr. Maxted why he had left the wolf-cubs, an act of rebellion he had decided upon simply to test its result.''
This makes the reader think that Jim likes to see how far he can push his luck, and MAYBE he likes to feel in control of something - in this case his attendance at the wolf-cubs - in a war where he has no control over anything else?
''The communists'' (could be seen as rebels in that time) ''had an intriguing ability to unsettle everyone, a talent Jim greatly respected.'' Here, he even wonders about telling Mr. Maxted that he has become a communist, probably just to test the result again, but then there could be a small part of him that would want to be a communist, as he says that he ''greatly'' respects them.
''On his cycle journeys around Shanghai - trips of which his parents were unaware -'' This shows that the trips would be forbidden, otherwise he would tell his parents, and therefore he is acting out against their wish, and so being rebellious.

4. Realistic
''...and their weird voices full of talk about a strange, inconceivable England. But if the war came, could they beat the Japanese? Jim doubted it...''
At first, the reader might get the impression that Jim is being unpatriotic, as he is originally English, however he has obviously thought about it, and he doesn't see the point in having false belief that his home country will beat the powerful country in which he now lives.

5. Admires the Japanese
''...he admired the Japanese. He liked their bravery and stoicism, and their sadness which struck a chord with Jim, who was never sad.''
Stoicism:indifference to pleasure or pain