Nectar in a Sieve Literary Elements

Literary Fiction; Novel

The novel is set in an unnamed poverty-stricken rural Indian village and takes place over several decades of the first half of the twentieth century.

The book is narrated in the first person by Rukmani, the protagonist; the point of view stays with her.

The tone is matter-of-fact and reflective; the mood is nostalgic and mournful.

Rukmani is the protagonist; antagonists include Kunthi, Biswas, Kenny, the tannery owners, and Nathan.

Rukmani's major conflict is that she wants to fulfill social expectations by raising bountiful crops and healthy children against the brutal realities of economic exploitation, industrialization, drought, starvation, premature death, and infertility.

The story reaches its climax when Nathan dies while trying to earn enough money for him and Rukmani to return to their village.

Rukmani foreshadows Nathan's death with the book's opening lines in which she speaks of sometimes imagining that he is with her still.

The novel's title is an allusion to the 1825 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Work Without Hope," which contains the line: "Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, / And Hope without an object cannot live."

An example of auditory imagery can be found in the line: "The darkness was lifting when I heard the sound of footsteps, wary, soft."

When Markandaya writes about Rukmani crushing dried chilies, she comments that "a fine red dust rose up, spreading a rich, acrid smell in the air. A pleasant smell, hot and pungent." While it may sound self-contradictory to describe the scent as both acrid (irritatingly strong and bitter) and pleasant, the paradoxical statement proves well-founded when one considers the unique appeal of spicy chili peppers.

Rukmani draws an uneasy parallel between her daughter, Ira, and Old Granny, a single woman whose lack of family means she lives alone on the street. Rukmani worries Ira, having been rejected by her husband once it seemed she couldn't conceive, may be destined to live out the same fate.

In the line, "That year the monsoon broke early with an evil intensity such as none could remember before," Rukmani personifies the monsoon season by ascribing to it an intensity she deems "evil," as though the rains are capable of intentional cruelty against farmers.