Nectar in a Sieve Essay Questions

What does the tannery represent in the novel?

In Nectar In A Sieve, the tannery is a symbol of urbanization and its repercussions. When the tannery arrives, many local peasants look upon it as a positive development, seeing the new industry as an opportunity for men in the farming community to make better wages. Rukmani, however, sees it as the beginning of the end of their humble rural way of life. Along with the tannery workers comes a local market for vices such as gambling, drinking, and sex work. Food prices become inflated because of increased demand, and local families are displaced by people and businesses associated with the tannery. The tannery owners eventually buy Rukmani and Nathan's land, marking an ignominious end to the couple's thirty years of thankless farm labor. Ultimately, the tannery shows how India's rapid urbanization in the early twentieth century forced people like Rukmani to either adapt or be displaced.

Why is Rukmani's family's rice crop significant?

The rice crop grown and harvested by Rukmani and Nathan symbolizes survival. As tenant farmers, the couple's ability to cultivate enough rice is crucial for paying the landowner's yearly rent and ensuring they have sufficient food reserves for themselves and their children. In bountiful years, they can also sell surplus rice to afford additional necessities like clothing and foodstuffs they don't grow themselves. Unfortunately, during bad years marked by monsoon flooding or drought, the family faces starvation and must rely on meager grain reserves. Markandaya emphasizes the symbolism of the rice crop when Rukmani loses Kuti and Raja during a famine, reminding the reader that the success or failure of the annual rice harvest is a matter of life and death for a tenant farmer.

How are gender roles significant to the novel?

As one of the novel's major themes, gender roles play a significant role in Nectar In A Sieve. Markandaya introduces the theme with Rukmani's reflections about her arranged marriage at age twelve. Despite being a child, Rukmani wholeheartedly embraces the role of a farmer's wife, unflinchingly taking on adult responsibilities despite her youth; in her cultural context, Rukmani sees herself as merely assuming the role she has been taught to take on. Beyond learning to carry out her farm chores and cooking, Rukmani internalizes the expectation that she must bear sons for her husband. Consequently, both Rukmani and Nathan experience disappointment when their first child, Ira, turns out to be a girl, as they perceive her as a financial burden due to the dowry they will have to provide for her. Men, however, are seen as beneficial to a family because they provide labor while they are young and require no dowry when married. The obligation to support a family financially drives most of Rukmani's sons to search for distant job opportunities, as they know they must prove themselves as providers to secure a wife and start a family. In this way, Markandaya portrays a society where the pressures of gender conformity dictate a person's life from a very early age, shaping their destiny in infancy.

What role does suffering play in Nectar In A Sieve?

Suffering—particularly resignation to suffering—plays a significant role in the novel as one of the major themes. Defined as the acceptance of pain, distress, or hardship as inevitable, resignation to suffering emerges as a theme when Rukmani comments on the pain and awkwardness of her first sexual experience at age twelve with her older husband, which she dismisses as merely a rite of passage all wives must endure. Rukmani shows similar courage and resilience as the novel goes on and she struggles to survive through their landowner's exploitative demands and dire growing conditions. When tannery guards kill her son Raja, Rukmani is surprised by the suggestion that she would try to seek compensation for the injustice; to Rukmani, her son's unnecessary death is yet another misfortune to be absorbed without complaint. Eventually, Rukmani's acquiescence is explained when she tells Kenny about the Hindu religious principle of enduring sorrows without complaint so that one's soul may be "cleansed."

What role does poverty play in the novel?

As one of the novel's major themes, poverty plays a significant role in Nectar In A Sieve. In the novel, Markandaya depicts a family of peasants who work as rice farmers in a remote Indian village. Living in mud huts, Rukmani and her family toil on land they do not own to pay rent to a landowner they never even meet. And when the tannery eventually subsumes their farm, the couple is left with almost no savings or plan for their future. The journey to find their son Murugan—the only one of their many children who they believe can afford to support them—ends in Nathan's untimely death while breaking rocks for money while homeless. In this way, Markandaya shows how the couple's work ethic isn't enough to overcome the social forces working against the poor.