67 pages • 2-hour read
Our Violent Ends
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Chapters 19-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
News of the train attack travels quickly through Shanghai, and people begin to quarantine rather than risk exposure. Benedikt considers how long it has been since a blackmail demand and senses he is being watched. It’s a boy, wearing a White Flower bandana, who asks for “Roman,” Roma’s rarely used full name. Benedikt threatens him, and the boy confesses to spying for Lord Cai, who “knows” that the White Flowers are behind the blackmail demands. The boy escapes. Benedikt returns to White Flower headquarters, where everyone is buzzing with the news that the Scarlets are behind the blackmail—the exact opposite message the Scarlets received. Benedikt tells them the “proof” is fake, stopping them from going out to kill Scarlets, for which he is reprimanded by Lord Montagov. They are interrupted by a true White Flower messenger, who reports that Tyler Cai is attacking.
Roma and Juliette arrive back in Shanghai with the stolen vaccine. The train station is unusually crowded, and an old woman tells them that a gangster safe house is on fire. Juliette runs off, concerned for Marshall, but it isn’t her safe house. Instead, she finds Tyler and a group of Scarlets laughing as they burn a house full of children and the elderly. The only reason Juliette doesn’t collapse in the street in despair, to be killed by the approaching White Flower forces, is because Marshall pulls her into an alley. She fears Roma will think their trip was a ploy to lure him away so Tyler could commit this brutal crime. Juliette weeps, not even caring if Marshall pities her, as Marshall explains the blackmailer’s trick. She apologizes for Tyler’s brutality, but Marshall says the real problem is how divided the city is. Marshall regrets that he didn’t arrive in time to stop Tyler, and Juliette reminds him that he can’t give Tyler further ammunition by revealing he is alive. Reluctantly, Juliette says she must summon more Scarlets; no matter how horrified she is by Tyler’s actions, she can’t leave them to be slaughtered. She tells Marshall to go help Benedikt, as he clearly longs to do.
Roma urges Benedikt to leave the losing battle between the Scarlets and the White Flowers before he gets killed, saying that knowing when to concede is how the Montagovs survive. Benedikt, however, plunges into the fight, and Roma follows him. Benedikt thinks he might die in the feud like his mother did. Marshall knocks out Benedikt to save him and drags his unconscious form away from the fight. He takes Benedikt back to the apartment they used to share. He knows he shouldn’t—Benedikt could wake at any moment—but he brushes a curl back from his forehead. He asks Benedikt not to give up on him and then leaves.
Chapter 20 Summary
Benedikt wakes up disoriented. How did he get home? He catches a scent that reminds him of Marshall, sending him into a wave of grief. He goes to the Montagov residence and finds Roma, who had frantically been looking for Benedikt all night. Benedikt tells Roma he has to stop working with Juliette. Roma counters that Juliette is not the same as Tyler, but Benedikt retorts that Juliette let Roma’s mother die and supposedly killed Marshall. Marshall’s death is the one thing they can’t forgive. Roma says he understands—he was Marshall’s friend, too—but Benedikt bursts out that he loved Marshall. He couldn’t admit it until now. Seeing the depth of his cousin’s grief, Roma swears on his life that he will kill Juliette.
Chapter 21 Summary
Juliette is frustrated. Their arrangement with the White Flowers is over, just when she has information. She has been calling every French hotel in the city, looking for clues about Moreau. She feels she is missing something because there haven’t been more attacks. Juliette is summoned to her father’s office, where she finds a group of Nationalists agreeing with Tyler’s plan to give the now completed vaccine to their allies only. Juliette protests, and General Shu tells her the Communists and the White Flowers have allied. When Juliette shares this with Kathleen, Kathleen uses her Communist contacts to confirm it is merely a sect of the White Flowers who have allied with them. Juliette realizes the blackmailer must be working on behalf of the Communists. Kathleen tells Juliette she can kill a monster, but she can’t stop a war, and she fears Juliette will die trying. Juliette tries to rush off to meet Marshall, but Kathleen stops her to tell her about Rosalind’s foreign lover. Juliette isn’t concerned, and Kathleen asks if Juliette ever gets tired of fighting for a city that doesn’t want to be saved. Juliette counters that she wants to be safe and that everyone deserves to be safe.
Juliette asks Marshall about White Flower ties to the Communists, but he doesn’t know. She lets General Shu’s name slip, and he freezes. When Juliette presses him, he reveals he was connected to the Kuomintang as a child and warns that General Shu is dangerous. (In Chapter 35, it is revealed that Shu is Marshall’s father.)
Chapter 22 Summary
At a temple, Juliette teases Rosalind until she reveals that her lover is associated with the White Flowers. Juliette and Kathleen are shocked, but Rosalind promises she will convince him away from the gang. Juliette is terrified but agrees to keep Rosalind’s secret; she wants her cousin to be happy. Juliette is standing alone when she spots Alisa Montagov, who says she tired of the funeral a few streets over. Juliette starts running—the White Flowers will pass Tyler and his men waiting out front. By the time she gets there, a brawl has broken out. She saves Tyler from an attacker and grapples with Dimitri, then grabs Alisa and runs off with her.
Chapter 23 Summary
Juliette tells Alisa that she won’t hurt her, she is just attempting to lure Roma. She hides Alisa and begs Roma to listen, even as he shoots at her. She pleads that she can help the city, but Roma says he doesn’t care about it anymore. They fight brutally. Roma throws a knife just as Alisa steps from her hiding spot. Juliette jumps in front of it. Roma sends Alisa to the nearest safe house for first aid supplies, as Juliette is bleeding heavily. As Roma tends to her painful wound, Juliette tells him that the White Flowers have been infiltrated by Communists. She tells him to find Moreau, but Roma says he can’t, not with the blood feud so bad, and the Scarlets the only ones with the vaccine. Juliette says she will share the vaccine with the White Flowers, even without permission, if he helps track Moreau. Roma agrees. Before Juliette leaves, Roma asks why she jumped in front of Alisa. She wants to tell him it is because she doesn’t want him hurt, but lies instead, saying it was to gain his cooperation.
Alisa asks why Roma tried to kill Juliette—the real reason, not the blood feud. He tells her the whole story, confessing he almost wanted to stay in the quiet of Zhouzhuang. He thinks of peaceful moments in the past with Juliette and wonders if that history is why he can’t kill her now. Benedikt appears and urges them home, and Roma wonders how much of their conversation he overheard.
Chapters 19-23 Analysis
As relations begin to improve between Roma and Juliette, Roma finds himself thinking increasingly about what he wants from life. He says to Alisa, “I entertain that it must be nicer to live simply instead. To catch fish and sell it on the fresh market every day for livable wages instead of trading mounds of opium for amounts of cash we’ll never need” (238). Even as the text highlights the appeal of an idyllic life away from Shanghai’s wars, Alisa, often used as a reasonable foil to the other characters, points out the privilege of this statement. “‘I think,’ she said, ‘that is something you say because we have been rich all our lives’” (238). This caution against romanticizing manual labor plays in with the largely positive portrait that the novel paints of the Communist movement, especially as Roma’s vision asks for a “livable wage”—the very thing the Communists protest for.
The reference to opium also highlights the theme of Colonialism, Cultural Conflict, and Reorienting “Foreignness.” Through the 19th century, China suffered from the proliferation of British-imported opium, culminating in the Opium Wars and the Unequal Treaty, which forced China to legalize foreign imports of opium and give preferential treatment to foreigners. By the 1920s, China had shifted more toward producing its own opium rather than importing it, but the gangs’ participation in the opium trade highlights their complicated moral standing as they profit from colonial-era exploitation.
These chapters also continue to draw lines between acceptable violence (according to the morally gray perspective of its protagonists) and unacceptable violence. Tyler’s attack against children is clearly marked as the latter, even though he technically attacks White Flower territory. This develops what the novel considers “innocent” parties in the various conflicts of the text, which becomes even more important when the narration catches up with the real historical events portrayed in the latter half of the book, particularly the Shanghai Massacre.
Juliette’s horror at Tyler’s cruel crime shows the way the novel uses high emotion to reveal truths, echoing the moments in which Juliette refuses to argue with Roma, as they cannot hide their true feelings when they fight. The deaths of innocents—deaths she cannot stop—cause Juliette to break down in the streets in horror and to allow a break in her armor; for a moment, she doesn’t even care if Marshall pities her. Even so, the complexities of shifting loyalties complicate the scene; Juliette sends for more Scarlets to protect Tyler, even as she’s horrified by his actions.
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