The Vendor of Sweets Themes

In The Vendor of Sweets, fear destroys people’s ability to communicate. Its protagonist Jagan consistently fails to communicate openly and honestly because he fears anger and rejection. For instance, early in the novel, Jagan’s 20-year-old son Mali announces that he no longer wants to go to the Indian college he has been attending. Jagan, baffled, is speculating Mali’s possible motives with his cousin when the cousin suggests that Jagan just talk to Mali about…

The Vendor of Sweets represents generational difference as an unavoidable result of historical change. The novel’s protagonist, Jagan, is an Indian man who participated in the nonviolent political campaign led by Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) to end British colonial rule in India. Jagan’s participation in this campaign shaped his life. Colonial police beat and jailed him for replacing a Union Jack with the Indian flag; while in jail, he was assigned to kitchen detail, and…

In The Vendor of Sweets, religion represents a detached, generous outlook on reality that, the novel suggests, is very difficult to sustain—and that can easily be perverted into a cowardly avoidance of worldly problems. The novel’s protagonist, Jagan, is a semi-devout practitioner of Hinduism: he regularly reads the Bhagavad Gita, a central scripture in Hinduism, and prays to the gods for guidance in his family home’s puja room. When he practices his…

The Vendor of Sweets represents India as a country whose national character is corrupted first by British colonialism and then by U.S.-dominated global capitalism. The novel takes place after British colonial rule in India has ended; its protagonist, Jagan, participated in the nonviolent independence movement led by Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948). Yet the novel represents the Indian patriot Jagan as something of an outlier in a community largely comfortable with British cultural influences. For example…