42 pages • 1 hour read
Samira AhmedInternment
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A 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 15-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 15-21 Summary
Jake’s parting words leave Layla uncertain. As Ayesha points out, saying a Muslim prayer hardly makes Jake a Muslim. Nevertheless, Layla is certain Jake is not the enemy. With Soheil and Ayesha, Layla discusses a plan she is hatching based on a resistance to Nazi Germany led by Sophie and Hans Scholl, a teenage brother and sister who were core members of the White Rose resistance group. The siblings spearheaded a pamphlet crusade to let the German people know the despicable actions of their government. This courageous endeavor ended in their arrest and execution. For Layla, raising awareness is crucial to getting the camp shut down. She quotes Sophie from her trial: “Somebody has to make a start” (175). Layla suggests that she write about the conditions in the camp, smuggle the document out, and arrange for it to be posted through social media. She is certain that the truth about the camp will fire up people to protest. Soheil suggests another idea: recruiting as many internees as they can to abstain from a meal, a fast inspired by the writings of Gandhi.
That afternoon, Layla watches as one of the internees is dragged from her family’s trailer. When two friends attempt to intervene, the guards punch and then handcuff the three and lead them away. The Director, concerned over the possibility of a riot, disperses the outraged crowd by firing a single gunshot into the air. In the eerie quiet, Layla can hear the three girls screaming. That night, Layla writes her first account of the camp. “I write it all in tiny print as legibly as possible despite my shaky hand while I wipe away tears so they don’t soak into the paper” (176). When the Director comes on the camp broadcast station to reassure that the “troublemakers” had been “dealt with” (177), Layla’s mother again cautions her daughter to try to be happy in the camp. Her father reminds her it would do no good to die in the camp.
As she leaves her trailer, Layla finds Jake waiting for her. He escorts her to the Mess, and she is apprehensive over why. David is waiting for her, having been smuggled in by Jake. David talks quickly; he gives Layla a flip phone and tells her he has moved into a hotel near the camp. Layla gives him her writings, and he promises to post them. For the first time in a long while, Layla feels hope even as David departs. Before Jake escorts her back to the trailer, he warns her again that if she is caught, he cannot save her from the Director. He reminds her no law operates in the camp, no rights exist for the internees, and that detaining the internees can involve torture and death. Finally, Jake cautions her that the Director has his eye on her; using the ever-hovering drones, he sees everything in the camp.
The following afternoon, Soheil, Ayesha, and Layla meet with Jake in the camp’s garden. They target the coming Friday’s dinner for their protest fast. In a moment of unguarded honesty, Jake shares his past: his mother died when he was young, and he was raised by an Army father who taught him the importance of patriotism and how the individual must bend to the will of the collective. He is not sure he agrees with his father.
That night, Jake surprises Layla at her trailer and tells her in his gruffest fake- authoritarian voice that the Director wants to see her. Terrified, her second posting tucked in her pants, she leaves with him only to find out it is a ruse. He tells her that the Director wants him to watch her and that she is trouble. Jake cautions her to lay low, but Layla says she will not go down without a fight. David is waiting for her in the Mess, this time wearing the jump suit of the camp’s sanitation workers. While Jake waits outside, David tells Layla her first posting has created a sensation and that the media is now investigating the camp.
At that moment, Jake breaks down the kitchen door and demands that the two put their hands up. He confiscates Layla’s writing before the Director sees it. The Director is right behind him. Guards restrain Layla and David. When Layla resists, the Director slaps her hard and snarls that in this camp, he is the law. David tells him he is using his phone to stream this live on Instagram. Recovering his composure, the Director apologizes for Layla’s “accident” and promises that she will receive medical attention. But he asks Layla to first tell the world that camp conditions are good and the rumors about the detainees’ treatment are exaggerated. Layla refuses. Jake then escorts Layla back to her trailer. He promises to get her second posting to David.
The next day, Friday, Layla and her friends are on edge: “The fast is tonight. People can get hurt” (239). There are Red Cross reps touring the camp, and the Director is going out of his way to point out the harmony in the camp and how much control he has over its operations. He keeps pointing out that it is a model camp—even as outside the gates, more and more protesters gather demanding the camp be closed, fired up largely by Layla’s postings and by David’s video of the Director slapping Layla. The Director assures the Red Cross reps that everything is fine.
Chapters 15-21 Analysis
Two elements of resistance—words and actions—are tested in these middle chapters. Quoting the radical German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Layla says, “All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with and I can turn the world upside down” (163). She thereby introduces into these middle chapters the novel’s faith in words. Resistance to this point has been scattered. Here, the novel introduces the vital role of social media in the emerging resistance efforts in Camp Mobius.
Layla’s effort to bring down the camp through non-violent resistance, embodied by her writing, is inspired in part by the example of Sophie Scholl (1921-1943), a college student who led a brief effort to bring down Hitler using incendiary brochures that she and her fellow freedom fighters spread across Nazi Berlin. That conspiracy, known as the White Rose, placed enormous faith in the power of words to effect dramatic change in people’s minds. The night Layla watches as three protesters are led out of the Mess, she cannot sleep: “I open my notebook I brought with me. And I write” (176). Those three simple words mark Layla transition into a freedom fighter. As she writes her reflections of the camp and its brutalities, that writing will be posted and become a trigger for public outrage over the government facility. Just days later, David assures her enthusiastically, “[Local news] ran your story and read your post on the air. The reporter said to expect it to explode. It already has. The whole world is going to know you, or at least your words. Layla, you did it” (210).
However, what Nietzsche’s quote does not acknowledge is that words alone cannot change the world. As impactful as Layla’s postings become, she knows it is not enough. People change the world, not words. In these middle chapters, Layla first experiences the risk and rewards of freedom fighting.
These chapters also track the first of what will be three increasingly more dramatic —and more dangerous—actions: the fast to be staged while the Red Cross representatives are checking the camp to ensure that there are no violations of civil liberties. If Layla’s faith in the power of words is sustained through David and his efforts, it is Soheil who convinces her that words are not enough, reminding her that the conspirators in the White Rose were all executed for treason. He tells Layla, “Courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage cannot be only in slogans and utterances. It’s doing the right thing in spite of fear” (196).
From the beginning, Layla, Soheil, and Alyesha understand the fast is risky. Refusing to eat while the Red Cross observers are in the camp can go very wrong. Once the observers leave, they would have nobody to protect them from the Director. “He won’t be trifled with,” Jake cautions them, “He will hurt you” (203). The courage to continue this dangerous resistance action comes from the most unlikely place: Layla’s own mother. Since the family arrived, the mother counseled Layla to maintain a low profile so that her time in the camp will be minimally dangerous. She sees now that all it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to say nothing, echoing the John Stuart Mills’ quote: “There is never a moment of ease, no relaxing…Progress in this country always carries a component of risk” (223).
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