31 pages • 1 hour read
Anita DesaiA Devoted Son
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Setting
The meaning of Rakesh’s behavior and Varma’s response can be appreciated only against the backdrop of India after independence. The narrator says,
How one man—and a man born to illiterate parents, his father having worked for a kerosene dealer and his mother having spent her life in a kitchen—had achieved, combined and conducted such a medley of virtues, no one could fathom, but all acknowledged his talent and skill (Paragraph 10).
The reader needs to know what was happening in India before Rakesh was able to go to America to become a doctor. The details of his father and mother being a kerosene dealer and working in a kitchen may seem typical, but it’s important to realize that they didn’t have any other options.
Due to the political strife that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, there was little way for them to improve their lot, and it only became possible for Rakesh to have the opportunity once the political climate changed. This implies that Rakesh has a privilege that his parents did not, but without knowing that cultural context, Rakesh’s ability to rise above the odds would appear as a fluke when it was tied to the passage of time and progress
Metaphor
Varma is tired of the medicines and restrictions that Rakesh has imposed on him and is ready for his life to be over. The narrator says, “It was as though he were straining at a rope, trying to break it, and it would not break, it was still strong. He only hurt himself, trying” (Paragraph 35). Medical science has kept him alive, making it impossible for him to achieve his goal. Not only does the rope signify his ties to life that are too strong to break, but they also represent bonds that keep him somewhere he doesn’t want to be (alive). When he tries to strain against them, he only ends up hurting himself, much like a rope would cut into his skin if he had actually been tied up.
Simile
Varma has been kept alive for longer than he would have preferred. The narrator says,
There he sat, like some stiff corpse, terrified, gazing out on the lawn where his grandsons played cricket, in danger of getting one of their hard-spun balls in his eye, and at the gate that opened onto the dusty and rubbish-heaped lane but still bore, proudly, a newly touched-up signboard that bore his son’s name and qualifications, his own name having vanished from the gate long ago (Paragraph 39).
Comparing him to a “stiff corpse” implies that he is gaunt and also that he doesn’t have free will. He is at the mercy of others for his well-being, and this leaves him feeling powerless and empty.
The rest of the simile implies that, like an actual corpse, he’s been ignored and forgotten, much like a deceased relative. Even though Varma is still alive and present, no one pays attention to him anymore. In a later passage, the narrator says that the family went “to see the clinic when it was built, and the large sign-board over the door on which his name was printed in letters of red, with a row of degrees and qualifications to follow it like so many little black slaves of the regent” (Paragraph 8). Referring to Rakesh’s qualifications after his name as “little black slaves of the regent” recalls the days when India was a colony of Britain. The Indian people were viewed as inferior to the colonizers, so they were given derogatory names. In this case, the implication is that Rakesh’s name is the most important part of the sign while the degrees and qualifications are less important. Apparently, more importance and emphasis are given to a person’s heritage rather than to the modern education that they received.
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By Anita Desai
