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Chapter 60: Peach Women of Aa’A – Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens on a cruise ship where the unnamed female narrator passes her days reclining in a deck chair, avoiding the organized pastimes and pretending to read. She is absorbed in memory. The narrative shifts to a past conversation with her lover in a seedy room, where she asks him for a happy story. He responds by telling an elaborate science-fiction tale about the Planet Aa’A.

In his story, two Earth fighter pilots, Will and Boyd, are shot down by the Lizard Men of Xenor. They crash‑land on Aa’A, a world inhabited only by beautiful women who grow on trees and are called “Peach Women.” The women heal the men, fulfill every fantasy, and provide endless pleasure. However, the men soon discover they cannot leave—the planet is enclosed in an invisible, unbreakable bubble. The more they try to escape, the more trapped they feel. The women assure them this paradise is all there is. The narrator’s lover finishes the tale by noting that outside the bubble is death. The narrator disagrees with his portrayal of the Peach Women, insisting he is wrong about them.

Key Events

  • The narrator sits on a cruise ship, avoiding games and swimming. She listens to the sound of dogs being walked and watches the sea.
  • She recalls a conversation with her lover. She asks why he tells sad stories; he replies that every story is sad when taken to its logical conclusion.
  • At her request, he tells a “happy story” about the Planet Aa’A.
  • The story begins: Will and Boyd, veteran harry‑craft pilots, are shot down by Xenorian Lizard Men. They black out and wake on a planet of beautiful, mind‑reading women.
  • The women heal them, grow on trees, and when they age they “disorganize their molecules” and regenerate.
  • The men initially enjoy total self‑indulgence but grow bored. They hit the women, who dissolve into pulp and reform without pain.
  • They try to explore and encounter an invisible wall. They realize they are permanently trapped.
  • The story ends with the men in despair, told by a Peach Woman that this is happiness and they will get used to it.
  • The narrator asks to let the men out; the lover says outside is death. She insists he is wrong about the Peach Women.

Character Development

  • The unnamed narrator (the woman): She is introspective and searching. On the cruise she refuses to participate, instead living in her memories. Her request for a happy story reveals her desire for comfort, yet she immediately questions the story’s premises. By the end she defends the Peach Women, showing a willingness to challenge the lover’s cynicism.
  • The lover (the man): He is weary and sardonic. He admits he only knows sad stories and frames his tale as a deliberate attempt to give her what she wants, but he twists it into a parable about the emptiness of perfect pleasure. His final remark—that outside the bubble is death—exposes his fatalistic world view.
  • Will and Boyd: They are stock adventure heroes, but their arc shows the failure of escapism. They start as brave, loyal warriors but become restless and violent when their desires are instantly met. They represent a masculine ideal that crumbles without struggle or risk.
  • The Peach Women: These characters are depicted as passive and infinitely accommodating. The narrator pushes back against this portrayal, implying they have interiority that the lover’s story ignores.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • The trap of perfect happiness: The planet Aa’A represents a gilded cage. Everything the men could want is provided, yet they feel suffocated. Their line “anything you can’t get out of is Hell” directly paraphrases the story’s central critique of utopia.
  • Storytelling as power and evasion: The lover uses a science‑fiction frame to talk indirectly about his own relationship with the narrator. The request for a “happy story” becomes a negotiation about what the narrator needs and what he is willing to give.
  • Female agency and objectification: The Peach Women exist solely to serve male desire. Their bodies can be struck without consequence, and they reform without pain. The narrator’s final objection—“You’re just wrong”—suggests a feminist resistance to this kind of fantasy.
  • Memory and escape: On the cruise, the narrator’s memory becomes her own “pastime,” mirroring the lover’s story as a way to pass time. Both the cruise and Aa’A are environments designed to lull the occupant, but neither delivers true peace.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is a cornerstone of The Blind Assassin because it makes explicit the novel’s nested‑story structure and its thematic preoccupation with the stories we tell to survive. The science‑fiction tale within the conversation within the cruise‑ship present gives the reader multiple layers of mediation. At the same time, it deepens our understanding of the narrator’s emotional state: she is trapped in her own version of the bubble, longing for a way out. The lover’s parable about endless pleasure as a kind of hell also foreshadows the broader novel’s critique of romantic illusions and societal expectations. The chapter ends with the narrator refusing to accept the lover’s conclusion, a moment of quiet defiance that signals her growing independence.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. Why does the narrator ask for a “happy story,” and how does the lover fulfill—or fail to fulfill—her request?
    She wants reassurance and a break from the relentless sadness of his usual tales. He does deliver a story that begins as a classic adventure with a happy ending, but he gradually undermines it by revealing the paradise to be a prison. In doing so, he fulfills the letter of her request but not its spirit, using the story to express his own bleak view that true happiness is impossible.

  2. What does the invisible bubble on Aa’A symbolize?
    The bubble represents any comfortable but confining situation—a relationship, a social role, or even life itself from which there is no escape except death. The lover directly says “outside is death,” implying that for him any exit from the current arrangement is unthinkably destructive. The bubble also mirrors the narrator’s own feeling of being trapped on the cruise ship, where she hides behind sunglasses and memories.

  3. Why does the narrator insist that the lover is “wrong about the Peach Women”?
    She senses that the lover’s portrayal reduces the women to mere fantasy objects with no real feelings or will. By calling him wrong, she defends the possibility that the Peach Women are not simply passive vessels but sentient beings who might experience their own desires and sorrows. This moment shows her refusing to let the lover’s cynicism define the story, and by extension, her own role in their relationship.

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