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Chapter 50
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
The judge dreams that Mutt is dying. The next day, he tells the cook that if he does not find her, he will kill him. The judge reprimands the cook, saying it had been his responsibility to watch her. The cook is distraught, because he had been fond of Mutt and didn’t think he had been negligent. He begins to weep and disappears into the forest. Sai sets out after him.
Even though the cook has been working for the judge for almost his entire life, the judge still treats him worse than he treats his dog. Sai, however, provides a little more hope for the future, because even though the cook has been her servant as well, she treats him far more like family, having never really had one of her own.
Themes
The cook, for his own part, goes to the canteen, where people laugh at him for being upset over a dog. Gyan is sitting in the corner, and when the cook leaves, Gyan follows. He asks the cook how Sai is doing. The cook responds that she is upset over Mutt. Gyan promises to find the dog.
Humiliation continues to befall the cook, partly because he is already so vulnerable. Additionally, Gyan’s attempt at chivalry here is ironic because Sai is actually upset about him, not Mutt. Thus, Gyan’s last appearance in the novel sets him on a mission that seems doomed to fail, while he might have been more successful in simply going to Sai and apologizing.
Themes
