The Vendor of Sweets

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1967

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-13

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Tradition vs Modernity

India has always been a country with a complex identity. Depending on the status of one’s birth, it can be a place of opulence and privilege, or of the most oppressive serfdom. The members of the lowest castes have historically been viewed as something almost inhuman by the members of the highest castes. Therefore, the transition between traditional customs to more modern viewpoints is not subject to generalization. It must be taken generation by generation, from caste to caste. The Vendor of Sweets presents the problem as experienced only by people of relative privilege.

Jagan would like his son to follow Gandhi, renounce worldly pleasures and material goods, and to honor the doctrines of Hinduism. Mali, on the other hand, sees such ambitions as beneath him. Not only is Mali unwilling to see things from Jagan’s perspective, it seems as if he has lost the capacity to even try.

Money as an Evil

Money—and what money signifies—is at the root of many of the novel’s contradictions. There is nothing inherently evil about money. However, it creates situations where suffering is inevitable because of human fallibility. Jagan says that money is an evil but continues to accumulate it through unscrupulous means. Mali steals money from his father to further his own aims and Jagan says nothing to him about it. When Mali returns from America he pressures Jagan to invest in his company with money he does not have. Jagan’s decision to reduce the price of his sweets causes turmoil among other businessmen. But none of these realities are the responsibility of money itself. Money is a tool that represents freedom. The characters in the novel often use money to put restrictions on their own freedoms.

Self-Denial

When human desires and appetites run unchecked, selfishness, addiction, and tragedy are often the result. There is much to recommend in practicing self-denial and self-control. In Jagan’s case, it is never entirely clear (until the end of the book) whether he believes the reasons he claims for his own ascetic lifestyle. He knows what Gandhi says about abstemiousness, and he can quote scripture on the subject at length. But there is a showy aspect to his public declarations of self-mastery, as if he is trying to reassure himself that he truly has control of his mind and appetites. Once he awakens in the final two chapters, it is obvious that what he thought was true self-mastery was anything but.