In The Shadow Of The Banyan

Aana, referred to as “Mama,” is Raami’s mother. Described as beautiful and a few years younger than Papa, Mama was born into a farming family. For that reason, she adopts the lifestyle of the “base people” with far greater ease than many of the urbanites the Khmer Rouge forces into the countryside.

Unlike Papa, Mama does not rely on storytelling or allegory to cope with the suffering around her. Yet although she describes herself as a realist, that does not mean she is cold. Her sense of reality manifests in the deep love she feels for her children. For example, her love for Raami sustains her after Radana’s death. Otherwise, she says, she would “bury [herself] right beside her” (219).

After Papa gives himself up for execution, Raami realizes that her image of Mama as a formidable woman always in control was partially an illusion. This becomes particularly clear when Raami must choose between Mama and Big Uncle. Raami recalls, “[W]hen that moment came [Mama]’d stood frozen [...] and it was painfully clear that she’d needed me as much as I’d needed her” (155).

Still, it is largely due to the force of Mama’s will that she and Raami ultimately survive the Cambodian genocide. Using the last of her family’s valuables, she cannily negotiates for ration supplements that prevent Raami from starving. She bribes Khmer Rouge leaders to ensure she reunites with Raami during the final planting season of the genocide. And finally, she scrounges together the gold needed to secure a spot on a caravan entering Thailand, thus escaping future depravations suffered by the Cambodian genocide after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

Sisowath Ayuravann, referred to as “Papa,” is a poet and minor Cambodian prince with connections to the Republican government, which falls to the Khmer Rouge in April of 1975. As such, he is a high-priority target for execution and thus poses as a mango grower after his family’s forced relocation from Phnom Penh. He is the only character whose name is unchanged from that of his real-life analogue, Ratner’s father.

Educated in France, Papa agrees with the egalitarian principles underneath the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia. The access he enjoyed to elite schools in both Cambodia and Europe is something he shares with Pol Pot, the leader of the Cambodian Communist Party and the man most responsible for the genocide that ensues. Papa is even hopeful, after hearing of the Khmer Rouge’s victory in Phnom Penh, that the violence will finally come to an end. Yet like the rest of Cambodia’s urban elite, he watches as those egalitarian ideals fall away during the Khmer Rouge’s bloody power-grab.

Papa has a far closer relationship with Raami than Mama does. He delights in reading stories and poems to her, all while teaching her about how storytelling can be a survival tool. Ultimately, however, he gives himself up to the Khmer Rouge to save his family. Underneath that, however, there is an implicit suggestion that Papa feels guilty about his upper-class status and views his downfall as the result of karma. He illustrates this guilt by the story he tells Raami about his old friend Sambath, a poor bread-seller whom Papa failed to protect in his youth.

Arun, referred to by Raami as “Big Uncle,” is Papa’s brother. Big Uncle is less optimistic early on about the Khmer Rouge’s plans to revolutionize Cambodia. He is also less spiritual than Papa, at least at the beginning of the book, cursing the gods in the same breath as he curses the Revolutionaries.

Big Uncle’s skepticism serves him well at many points in the narrative. For example, contrary to his sister Tata’s presumptions, Big Uncle knows that the Kamaphibal’s call for intellectuals and professionals to join them is merely a ploy to identify individuals for execution. He also smartly advises Mama to hold on to her belongings rather than trade them with the local peasantry for better lodgings, thus threatening to expose the family as upper-class.

As Big Uncle’s ordeal continues, culminating in the deaths of his wife, sons, and sister, his outlook toward spirituality changes. He shaves his head in the style of a Buddhist monk to project humility to the gods as he mourns his family’s deaths. He replaces his pessimism with a steadfast sense of hope that Mama and Raami are still alive. His hope and his will to survive, however, meet their limits after he buries the bodies of four children crushed by the collapsing embankment at the labor camp. Shortly after this tragedy, Big Uncle hangs himself.

Pok and Mae are an elderly husband and wife who work in the rice paddies in the farming community of Stung Khae. Having never had children of their own, they warmly welcome Raami, Radana, and Mama into their home after the trio’s forced separation from Big Uncle and his family. To Raami, they are the epitome of the “base people” that the Khmer Rouge professes to celebrate. They are extremely hard-working with a knowledge of rice cultivation that comes from being the product of generations of farmers. Their ancient ties to the land make them seem to Raami almost like characters from one of the folktales she loves. Yet for all the ways that the Khmer Rouge’s propaganda celebrates people like Pok and Mae, in practice the Revolutionary army rejects their ancient knowledge of rice cultivation which leads to severe shortages and, later, widespread famine.

Pok and Mae say a tearful goodbye to Raami and Mama, who must relocate again because they all grew too close to one another. The Khmer Rouge rejects the family unit as a source of identity and allegiance in that it threatens to subsume the shared national identity the Revolutionaries seek to impress upon the Cambodian population.

Grandmother Queen is mother to Papa, Big Uncle, and Tata. Already slipping into dementia at the start of the narrative, her speech tends to take the form of ghostly observations or doom-laden prophecies. She is the progenitor of the prophecy, “There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan tree” (19).

As she loses more and more of her family to genocide, Grandmother Queen begins to hallucinate their ghosts all around her. As such, she represents a bridge between the natural world and the spirit world, which to Raami gives her a wisdom that manifests even in her most incomprehensible ramblings. As she breathes her last breaths in the row house in Ksach, she believes Papa is there to ferry her to the afterlife.