I Am the Clay can be a little confusing, especially since the main characters do not have names. We summarized selected sections to help you understand what is going on in the story.
I Am the Clay Chapter 1: Pages 1 to 21
During the Korean War, South Korean refugees head south because the Chinese and North Korean soldiers have come from the North. An old man and his wife avoid gunshots and bombs by hiding in a ditch. They find a semi-conscious boy in the ditch who has been wounded by the bombs. Nearby an ox dies of a heart attack, but the old man cannot carry meat from it because his wife makes him carry the boy in his cart instead.
A Red Cross ambulance drives by and the wife jumps in front of it to make it stop, but the driver refuses to take the boy. He gives her a first aid kit and drives on. She uses it to bandage the boy’s wound.
The old man does not want to share his rice with the 9 or 10-year-old boy because he thinks the boy will die anyways. The wife uses snow to cool the boy’s feverish forehead. The man sees the wife’s strength, but he resents that she dishonored him by not being able to have children. Actually, she had one, but he died. In late afternoon, they reach Seoul (the capital of South Korea). The man had been there once before when he inherited land, and an official wearing an American suit charged him extra legal fees. The husband and wife say they are from Dongduchon. The husband does not let his wife help a crying girl.
They exchange some of their rice for a place in a shack along a frozen river. The woman lays out their quilts then takes the boy to a Red Cross doctor. The doctor will only help soldiers, not the boy. So the woman pulls the splinter from the bomb out of the boy’s wound, which causes him to bleed. Not wanting to watch the boy bleed to death, the doctor decides to help. When the woman returns, she cooks rice over an oil drumfire, and the man remembers when the Japanese controlled Korea in World War II and tortured them. In the morning, the old man and his wife see the boy has lived but others have frozen to death.
The old man goes to find wood, but he gets lost in the city. Then a hungry dog comes, and the old man discovers a pile of wood someone had hidden under rubble. He takes some of the wood.
I Am the Clay Chapter 7: Pages 167 to 201
The old woman wants to give thanks to the spirits of the Red Cross for helping her but does not know how. The boy walks with his eyes closed to picture his lost mother and sister. The old man remembers hunting pheasants with his uncle. When they arrive in the frozen valley, they build a fire and cook the last of their rice. The old man steals a bottle of alcohol to get drunk.
They see the cave they almost died in. The boy wants to go look at it, but the old man does not. While the old man, his wife, and the boy look at the cave, two boys steal their piece of canvas from their cart. A Korean officer gives them a packet of rice, and the old man catches fish. They arrive in Seoul.
The old man goes to find his old stash of wood. He thinks the boy might be the cause of his good fortune with the fish and wood. He still does not want to keep the boy and gets annoyed when the old woman says they might keep him even once they get to their village.
On their way out from Seoul, they pass by an American run orphanage. They get to the place where they found the boy, but the boy remembers nothing of that time. The man is still upset he had to take the boy instead of pieces of the dead ox, and he accuses the woman of postponing getting to their village when she insists on staying the night there. When they do arrive at their village, they find only military and Red Cross compounds. The man tells the boy he can stay for a little while, but then the boy must leave them.
They make it back to their home, and the old woman thanks her ancestors. The old man consults the old carpenter who suggests that they boy stay and work for the foreigners, but the boy wants to return to his village.
The old woman bathes the boy, and the old man thinks that maybe the spirits gave them this boy in exchange for the one they lost.
The townspeople talk about how most of the war destroyed most of the other villages. They buried the dead on top of a hill. The old man, woman, and carpenter want the boy to stay to help plant the seeds the government will give, but the boy says he had dreams of his parents and must return to his village.
The boy travels to his village. The old carpenter gives him directions, and the old woman gives him rice balls and the quilt. He sees a topless woman on the way. The boy finds the village and nearby cemetery in ruins. He cannot find a familiar face, so he returns to the old man and woman and gets a job working for the Americans.
I Am the Clay Chapter 8: Pages 202 to 225
The old man and woman plow a rice field with the old man guiding the plow and the old woman pulling it. The boy goes to the American compound. They take an X-ray to see if he has lung sickness. He does not. They give him a cream to put on his face and tell him to come back in four or five days when his face wounds heal and not to bring his expensive jacket. When they boy returns, he tries to help plow the field, but the old man refuses to teach him how. He tells the boy to bring back meat next time he sees the foreigners.
The boy’s face heals. The carpenter explains that he needs to pay the Korean soldier at the American compound from his first paycheck because he found him a job. While the old woman does laundry, she feels a bubble of dizziness burst inside her head.
The boy begins working in the kitchen with the officers of the medicine-and-doctors battalion. He works hard, unlike his lazy teenage coworker. At the end of the day, the cook gives him meat. The old man and woman are very grateful.
The boy buys a mask from the teenager because the helicopters kicked up a lot of dust, and the boy does not want to get sick and loose his job. The boy gets promoted to cleaning the officers’ houses, but the cook says he will continue to give him meat. They boys’ dead family haunts him.
The rains come and destroy the harvest and their roof. They also shift the location of buried land mines, which people accidently touch, and die/get hurt from. The teenage boy tricks the boy into helping him steal from the officers. The boy hides his share of the money in a buried jar. The old woman remembers the lines from the Christian song, “Thou are the potter, I am the clay,” but does not remember what they mean. The old man continues to drink. During the winter, a famine strikes, and people die.
In the spring, the boy digs up his jar of money and gives the money to the old man to buy an ox. They use the ox and rent it to neighbors. They boy stops helping the teenager steal, but there has been so much stealing that the soldiers tighten security at the American compound and the cook can no longer give the boy meat. The war ends. The old woman faints and falls into the stream. Other women rescue her, but she dies that night.
The old man mourns the old woman. He gives the boy the gloves the old woman had kept and tells him to go to work.
Do you want to help other students reading this book? Please send summaries of other sections or links to other helpful I Am the Clay resources to Marci@RegalLessons.com.
Also, here’s a book review by the Los Angeles Times if you want something subjective!
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