45 pages • 1 hour read
Hanna AlkafThe Weight of Our Sky
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.
Themes
The Stigma and Reality of Mental Health
Mel’s ongoing struggle with mental health concerns, specifically OCD, is a major component of the novel. As Salmah considers her options regarding her daughter’s mental health, her sister recommends seeing a psychologist, to which Salmah responds, “Those quacks will just send her to the asylum, or worse. I hear they cut up people’s brains, trying to fix them” (24). This primarily reflects the common feelings toward psychology as the field developed across the 20th century and into the 21st. Fear of psychologists prevents people from getting the assistance they need, allowing public perceptions of mental health struggles to worsen as people cannot seek out the proper care. For Mel, this means losing much of her extended family members, who begin to abandon her to avoid bringing a curse or disease into their own families. By the end of the novel, Mel does not miraculously resolve her mental health struggle—by framing her lasting relationship with the Djinn as an ongoing battle for control of herself, she represents the reality of such issues.
Throughout the work, Mel focuses a considerable effort on avoiding being seen during her tapping and counting, emphasizing the stigma placed on those who struggle with mental health concerns. Mel’s fears come true when Vincent sees Mel counting when he needs to find Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong, at which point he tells Mel, “And now, when I could be there with them, we’re stuck in here because you’re too busy counting to get your butt moving” (189). The implication of Vincent’s rant is that he sees Mel as a selfish, irrational person who is holding him back from finding his parents, confirming Mel’s fears of how others will react to her compulsions. Vincent is incorrect, however, because Mel’s compulsions are not voluntary, and she is not choosing to delay him. When the riots end, Mel discovers her inner strength, which allows her a greater degree of control over her Djinn, but she notes how her mental health struggles are “a battle for control of [her] brain and [her] body” (273). This highlights that such mental health struggles cannot be completely resolved, but they can be managed and mitigated by effective practices and willpower. Vincent, like others, assumes that mental health struggles are either signs of weakness or absurdity, but Mel shows how such issues can be overcome, and can even become strengths, pushing Mel to challenge herself and develop.
The Importance of Love and Friendship
Examining the relationships of the novel through Mel’s mental health struggle, it appears that love and friendship are problematic, adding onto her visions of death as she becomes closer with multiple characters. However, love and friendship then become the key to Mel’s realization of her own personal strength, as well as how she defuses, if temporarily, the tension of the rioters. Critically, the importance of love, friendship, and support are often shown in the text through their removal, such as Salmah’s hopelessness or Vincent’s outburst at Mel’s counting, each of which serves to highlight how the support of friends and family is necessary both in overcoming mental health concerns and in surviving dangerous and violent situations. As Mel traverses a riot-torn Kuala Lumpur while battling her Djinn, love and friendship stand out as crucial components in her journey for internal and external peace and understanding.
When Mel is trying to fend off her Djinn as Salmah realizes Mel’s ongoing struggle with mental health, she hears a voice in the far reaches of her mind. The voice “sometimes sounds like Saf, and sometimes sounds like Vince, and sometimes sounds like Paul McCartney” (261), reflecting her best friend, her potential love interest, and her deceased father expressed through The Beatles. The voice reminds Mel of her own accomplishments and identity, which exist alongside or despite her mental health condition, and the encouragement of her internalization of love and friendship encourages her to confront the rioters. Such a moment is built on the connections and attachments Mel builds over the course of the novel, pulling from her relationships and the support she derives from them. The voice, then, is an amalgamation of the love and friendship Mel has experienced, urging her to believe in herself as others do.
As Mel exits the van, she confronts Frankie with the reality of his parents’ love, noting how Frankie’s mother “is one of the kindest, bravest people [she’s] ever met” (264) and drawing on the love and kindness Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong express for all Malaysian peoples. In a way, Mel’s speech transfers the confidence and energy she built up in her mind over to Frankie, who protects Mel, Salmah, May, and Ethan from the tense crowd of rioters. This shows how love and friendship are not only internally inspirational, but externally powerful, stopping a crowd intent on violence long enough to protect those closest to Mel. After the riots, Mel, Salmah, Vincent, Auntie Bee, and Uncle Chong are all together in friendship and love, and though Frankie and Pakcik Adnan are both distant from Mel’s family, the overarching theme of love and friendship indicates that each of them will return in time.
Race and Identity in a Society Divided Along Racial Lines
The inciting point of the 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur was racial tension between Malay and Chinese groups in Malaysia, making race a critical component of the novel. The protagonist, Mel, is Malay, while many of the characters she interacts with throughout the novel are Chinese, like Vincent, Frankie, and Auntie Bee. The complexities of race in the novel are tied to how these characters perceive themselves and their identities, with some characters eschewing race as a personal identifier, while others fashion their identities almost exclusively through racial understanding. In the Rex, Auntie Bee claims that Mel is Eurasian, a mix of European and Asian ethnicities, exposing early on the socially constructed nature of race and setting up the novel as an exploration of how race interacts with other elements of identity.
For Mel, race links closely to politics—she remarks, “[I]t seems to me like it’s mostly a bunch of old men competing to see who has the loudest voice” (18). As the riots continue, Mel seems largely confused by the intense hatred shown by both Malay and Chinese rioters. Uncle Chong explains how both Malay and Chinese people in Malaysia feel disrespected, as the “Malays resent the Chinese for taking over the urban areas, getting rich while so many of them remain poor in the kampongs” (72), while the Chinese people resent being forced into a political minority in which they lack proper representation for their own concerns. These issues, however, are broad social issues of politics and race in which no individual person feels the specific effects. Instead, these political issues needed to seep into the personal sphere to incite action. Jay comments on the riots: “Malay idiots and Chinese idiots decided to kill one another because they believed what the bloody politicians told them” (123), highlighting how rhetoric and presentation of political issues sparked individual people to violence.
Frankie is one such individual, consistently arguing that he and his family need to fight for their people, but race is too ambiguous to define in a moment of violence. Vincent notes how the rioters “don’t see us as people, and they don’t want to. They just know that we’re not them” (136), basing decisions of life and death on an instant reaction to another person’s appearance. Just as the Chinese gang members are tricked into thinking Mel is Eurasian, there is a gray area of race in which it is difficult to say briefly whether a person is from any given ethnicity. In the moment, people like Frankie cling tightly to their race, identifying more personally with their group and targeting anyone outside that group, but characters like Vincent and Mel, who frequently step outside their racial group to offer help or ask for support, show how the mentality of Frankie and the rioters is counterproductive.
