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Chapter 34
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inheritance of Loss, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Globalization
Poverty vs. Privilege
Home and Belonging
Gender and Misogyny
Power and Humiliation
Summary
Analysis
Gyan had been the last one to touch the guns, admiring them. Sai had told Gyan that the judge used to go hunting, as the cook had told her. She had been trying to impress Gyan, but later wondered why the guns were something to be proud of.
Sai comes to grapple with the judge’s participation in the ICS, which is definitively pro-colonialist and anti-independence. The guns also represent the judge’s failed attempts to adopt or be accepted into British culture because he is not good at hunting, as Desai has revealed by this point.
Themes
The narration skips ahead, after the incident in which the boys from the GNLF steal the judge’s guns. The sub divisional officer (SDO) assures the judge that they will catch the criminals. After he leaves, the judge tells the cook that they never find anyone. Sai continues to think of Gyan avoiding her.
As the violence escalates, the economic divide deepens in some ways, but the violence also levels inequality in others, as no one is able to seek justice for the crimes being committed.
Themes
A few days later, the police pick up a drunk and accuse him of the crime. He is transported to the police station. Bored, the police begin to beat him, bashing his head, knocking out his teeth, breaking his ribs. He screams and desperately apologizes. When he crawls out of the station, he has been blinded.
The injustice continues as the police become more and more reckless to match those they are fighting. Not only do they use violence to assert their power unnecessarily, but they also pick on some of the weakest members of society.
Themes
