Wesley Huang

10B English
Chapter Summaries
Empire of the Sun

Chapter 6-10 Summaries

Chapter 6 – The Youth with the Knife

After the Japanese seized the International Settlement from the Americans and

Europeans by another Asian power, the Japanese soldiers were already occupying into

Shanghai. While Jim was waiting for Yang in a tram station, a youth seized him with a

knife. Jim ran away from the youth, and realized that the Japanese, officially his enemies,

offered his only protection in Shanghai. Jim got home, but saw that his house was empty

and messed up.

Chapter 7 – The Drained Swimming Pool

After finding that no one is home, Jim began to live by himself freely. After a few

days, he accepted that his mother and father would not be coming home. Then he

started making his own decisions, like riding the bike inside the house and making his

own food. When he saw the drained swimming pool, which was always filled before, he

was really interested. He picked up the coin that he never could reach. Then he went to

visit his friends house, but he finds them both empty and messed up like his house. The

only people there are his familiar amahs, but they slapped his. Thinking that in order to

survive and find his parents, he needs to surrender to the Japanese. However, the

Japanese broke his bicycle.

Chapter 8 – Picnic Time

Unable to surrender, he went back to the Maxted’s apartment. Looking himself in the

mirror, he wonders if his parents will still recognize him. He ate a fine breakfast and went

to fiz his bicycle. He knew he needs the machine to find his parents and surrender to the

Japanese. After he fixes his bike, he went back out to the Shanghai streets. Only finding

thousands of Japanese soldiers already occupied in Shanghai, he tried to surrender

again. Once again he failed, so he left the French concession. He broke into a dentist’s

empty house finds food, but he only drank the can of milk and went to sleep.

Chapter 9 – An End to Kindness

Searching for more food, Jim left the dentist’s house. Then he saw some Japanese

soldiers next to the drained swimming pool eating boiled rice and fish. A soldier scrapped

some burned rice and fish scales and gave it to Jim. It was Jim’s first hot food since he

left the hospital. The soldier took pity on Jim, recognizing that this small boy was starving,

gave some clear water to Jim. Jim got attached to these Japanese soldiers, and he ran

errands for them. Within a week Jim was dependent on this Japanese patrol for almost

all his food. However, one morning the Japanese soldiers failed to appear. He starved

and ate his liqueur chocolates he saved. He waited, but those soldiers are never coming

back. As he set out on the long journey to the Bund he thought of the Japanese soldiers

who had fed him from their cooking pot, but he knew now that kindness counted for

nothing.

Chapter 10 – The Stranded Freighter

Jim sat next on the catwalk of the funeral pier below the deserted Nantao shipyards.

The starvation made Jim hallucinate things into food. The river turns into chopped glass

and transforming the distant banks and hotels of the Bund into a row of wedding cakes.

He saw a ship Idzumo, and would have liked to eat the ship. Rejoining his parents, giving

himself up to the Japanese, even finding food to eat meant nothing now that the freighter

was at last within his reach. For two days Jim wandered along the Shanghai waterfront.

Soon, he lost his bike to a Chinese shopkeeper when he fell off. Then one day, an

American took him onto the freighter.