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LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Vendor of Sweets, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
In The Vendor of Sweets, what people can buy affects what they desire—blinding them to the nature of the good life, which the novel defines as satisfaction and happiness with one’s lot in life. This, the novel suggests, often requires far fewer material goods than people realize. Jagan, the novel’s protagonist, runs a sweet shop in the fictional Indian town of Malgudi. Notably, Jagan himself does not sample his wares; he has given up added sugars in an attempt to live in a happier and holier way, suggesting that his commercial wares are unnecessary to—and are perhaps opposed to—a good life. When Jagan lowers the prices of his sweets so that poor children can afford them, moreover, he creates unhappiness: more people want the cheaper sweets, the shop sells out faster, and many angry people go away empty-handed. Jagan’s lack of interest in his own commercial wares, and the counterintuitive unhappiness that the cheaper sweets cause, both suggest that sweets and other luxury items are at least unnecessary for a good life, if not outright opposed to the good life. In a similar vein, Jagan’s son Mali wants to be a writer—until he goes to America and discovers the existence of story-writing machines, which mechanize creative work. Mali’s vague artistic aspirations soon give way to commercial ones: he decides that he wants to start a factory for story-writing machines in India, make lots of money, and increase the number of novels that India produces (while presumably lowering the quality of those novels). In the pursuit of this factory, Mali becomes more and more unhappy and is eventually arrested for alcohol possession while going to meet with foreign investors. By highlighting the unhappiness that Jagan’s lowered prices and Mali’s story-writing machines cause, the novel suggests that more commerce, more goods, and more money don’t necessarily translate to better lives, either for consumers or for producers.
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Commerce, Taste, and the Good Life ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Commerce, Taste, and the Good Life appears in each chapter of The Vendor of Sweets. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Commerce, Taste, and the Good Life Quotes in The Vendor of Sweets
Below you will find the important quotes in The Vendor of Sweets related to the theme of Commerce, Taste, and the Good Life.
Chapter 1
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“Conquer taste, and you will have conquered the self,” said Jagan to his listener, who asked, “Why conquer the self?” Jagan said, “I do not know, but all our sages advise us so.”
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As long as the frying and sizzling noise in the kitchen continued and the trays passed, Jagan noticed nothing, his gaze unflinchingly fixed on the Sanskrit lines in a red-bound copy of the Bhagavad Gita, but if there was the slightest pause in the sizzling, he cried out, without lifting his eyes from the sacred text, “What is happening?”
Chapter 2
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Jagan found his son’s attraction to aspirin ominous. He merely replied, “I’ll get you better things to eat than this pill. Forget it, you understand?”
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Chapter 5
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Gradually his reading of the Bhagavad Gita was replaced by the blue airmail letters.
Chapter 6
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“You are not one who knows how to make money. If you were unscrupulous, you could have built many mansions, who knows?”
“And what would one do with many mansions?”
Jagan asked, “Do you want to use this for writing stories?”
“Yes, I am also going to manufacture and sell it in this country. An American company is offering to collaborate. In course of time, every home in the country will possess one and we will produce more stories than any other nation in the world. Right now we are a little backward. Except Ramayana and Mahabharata, those old stories, there is no modern writing, whereas in America alone every publishing season ten thousand books are published.”
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Chapter 7
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“Do you make your images there?”
At this, the man burst into a big laugh and said, “Did I not tell you what I do now? I make hair dyes. I can make the whitest hair look black.”
Chapter 8
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He went on talking and Jagan listened agape as if a new world had flashed into view. He suddenly realized how narrow his whole existence had been—between the Lawley Statue and the frying shop[.]
Chapter 9
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“If she has nothing to do here, she goes back, that’s all. Her air ticket must be bought immediately.”
“But a wife must be with her husband, whatever happens.”
“That was in your day,” said Mali, and left the room.
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Chapter 10
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“Mo has no more use for me.”
“Use or no use, my wife—well, you know, I looked after her all her life.”
Chapter 11
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“Grace has been getting funny notions, that’s why I told you to pack her off, but you grudged the expenditure,” said Mali.
Chapter 13
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“That’s why I discouraged his idea of buying that horrible green car!” He vented his rage against the green automobile until the cousin interrupted, “A bottle could be sneaked in anywhere . . .”
“You don’t understand. It’s the motor car that creates all sorts of notions in a young fellow,” said Jagan[.]
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