Sold Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Lakshmi loves to learn. It's one of the things that sets her apart in her home in Nepal, and it's one of the things that saves her sanity in the Happiness House. Knowing this, we can immediately re...

So let's clear something up first: does Lakshmi's notebook count as a book? They're both bound, they both have pages… but their purposes are completely different, which is why we're treating them...

When Lakshmi changes from her mountain clothes to the fancy clothes that Auntie Bimla gives her near the border, she stuffs her old clothes into her small bundle.So why is this important? Well, clo...

As a rule of thumb in literature, locks imply a lack of control (or taking control), a power discrepancy, and imprisonment. On the flip side, a lack of locks represents something too—here we can...

Roofs, for Lakshmi, represent prosperity. She and her mother have a thatched roof, which is made of closely bundled straw—it's cheap, and it leaks. Gita's father, who has more money than Lakshmi...

The first time Lakshmi sees a TV is in the common room after she arrives at Happiness House. She is entranced by it, and the movie star she sees on the screen is someone she wants to be.But then sh...

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? All right, so the mirrors in the brothel don't talk to Lakshmi, but they sure reveal a lot to her and us as readers.Traditionally in liter...

There are two things that really fly in the novel: kites and birds. And flight, in literature, usually represents things like freedom or escape. So when Harish leaves to fly his kite as his mother...

Monica's doll makes very few appearances, but it's important enough that Lakshmi packs it in her bundle as she prepares to escape Happiness House.When we think about the purpose of dolls in our liv...

Some of the names in Sold have some pretty important meanings. The thing is, though, that they almost all work as a sort of trick: the opposite of what a name suggests might be true about a charact...