Summary Of Saving Sourdi

“Saving Sourdi” by May-Lee Chai
In “Saving Sourdi” the protagonist Nea impacts the story with her personality. She is a caring and straightforward person. Sometimes she seemed selfish because it seemed that she wanted her sister all to herself. As the story progresses it shows that Nea was just trying to make sure her sister was happy.
Nea has a strong character. Certain situations in her life have made her strong. She gets to see as the bond with her sister loosens and she cannot do anything about it. She is caring and protective. At the beginning of the story she defends Sourdi when a guy was harassing her. She stabs him and she did not care about the consequences, all she cared about was her sister. Her protectiveness leads her to almost kill a person she barely even knew. She was so young and naive that she made a lot of mistakes. She did not take her time to think about what she was about to do. Her fury just makes her jump into an impulsive decision. Also she is stubborn because her mother asks her to apologize she
refuses to do it and even after her mom slaps her she does not do it.
Nea has a great bond with her sister.
She tries to keep the same bond throughout the story. She is selfish because she wants her sister all to herself. She is not happy when Sourdi goes out with Duke because she is scared that someone will take Sourdi away from her. That is one of the reasons she does not like Mr. Chhay because he married Sourdi and they moved away so Nea barely saw her sister. Nea is very controlling. She expected things to go the way they were when Sourdi and she were little. Her life is so complicated; at her young age she has seen a lot that has just confused her. She never understood why her sister married such an old guy. Sourdi was unhappy with her arranged marriage but she never tried to do anything about. Nea was more concerned about it and she voices her opinion to her mother, who does not listen to what she is saying. No one ever took the time to explain to her what was going on so she made her own
assumptions.
Nea is very impulsive. She does not take the time to think about her decisions and she does not get enough information before jumping into conclusions. When she answered the phone and she noticed that her sister was crying, she immediately thought that Mr. Chhay had hit her sister and then since her sister wanted to talk to their mother she gave the phone to her. Her sister and her mom talked and when her mother hung up the phone she did not explain to Nea what was going on. They hid something that could have saved them from a lot of trouble. Since she thought that Mr. Chhay was abusing her sister she wanted to save her sister from that so she went to look for Duke and she asked him to drive her to Sourdi’s home. When they saw the bruises in Sourdi’s arm and face they immediately thought that he beat her and then Duke was convinced that Mr. Chhay was hurting Sourdi so he punched him and broke his nose. The lack of information leads to Lea’s bad interpretations of what was going on. She was very protective and she would not allow Mr. Chhay to beat her sister up so she tried to get her sister to run away but she finds out that her sister was trying to be happy. Nea’s impetuousness leads to a lot of the vents that happen throughout the story. A lot of the things Nea did were because of her lack of information. She was caring, impulsive, and protective. Her character traits lead her to try to help Sourdi in what she thought the problem was. She was sure that something was going on but then when she found out that she had made the wrong assumptions it was too late. She was young and naive and not having a mother that could guide her was what resulted in a lot of her mistakes.