“Somehow you don't question things until you come face to face with the person and suddenly - suddenly you realize that behind all the stories it have a flesh and blood, breathing, feeling person who capable of hurting, yes!”
On arrival at the Paradise Alms House, Mala is treated as a dangerous patient because she is a murderer who has been declared mentally unfit. Tyler is the only nurse who shows any measure of empathy towards her as he narrates her story from her early life. On the surface, she is a murderer who committed an unforgivable crime while underneath she is a victim of emotional and physical abuse. The reader is left to determine if she is innocent or guilty depending on their own moral compass and judgment. Whilst Tyler chooses to not judge her out of her action to take her father’s life, but by the trauma she underwent on that man’s hands.
“I wonder at how many of us, feeling unsafe and unprotected, either end up running far away from everything we know and love, or staying and simply going mad. I have decided today that neither option is more or less noble than the other. They are merely different ways of coping, and we each must cope as best we can.”
The narrative highlights how exploitation and abuse can drive an individual into mental anguish that they cannot wake up from. Mala’s case is one that demonstrates the way parental abuse can distort a child's perception of reality which impacts their adult life. Despite her homicidal action, it is sort of a means of seeking closure or rather coping with her existential suffering. Thus, Tyler looks at the coping mechanisms and that any response is still as complex as the next.
