Cara Conaway Post 3

     The story of a girl named Lakshmi in the book Sold by author Patricia McCormick is told in a candid and somber tone that reflects the inhumane and unjust series of events that unfold in Lakshmi's life. Her detached and often poetic narrative voice shows also how her arduous life has affected her, even back when she had a family to support her. 

     At her home within the mountains of Nepal, Lakshmi has a hard but ultimately happy life, although her tone still carries a sort of sad and informative feel. She cares for her baby brother, helps her mother with chores and work, and pretends to worship the very ground her one-armed stepfather walks on. She does the best she can in school and at home, but it never seems to be enough for her seemingly uncaring stepfather. Lakshmi is puzzled at why all the injustices seem to fall on the female gender. "I ask Ama why. "'Why,' I say, 'must women suffer so?' 'This has always been our fate,' she says. 'Simply to endure,' she says, 'is to triumph.'" (16.) 

     As if the discrimination that Lakshmi goes through in her village is not enough, she is tricked into moving to a big city to become a maid, when really she is unwittingly being sold into the underground world of prostitution. Once at the brothel ironically named the Happiness House, Lakshmi begins to realize that she won't be sweeping floors and polishing silver. As man after man invades her privacy not only in body but in mind, her storytelling becomes evermore detached, showing how these terrible experiences only push her further into the darkest depths of her mind. "Once it starts, you may hear the sound of horns bleating in the street below, ...but if you are lucky, or if you work hard at it, you hear nothing" (127.) 

     Lakshmi's tone makes the subtle details of her experiences being raped become all the more real. She becomes shocked into dullness, if only as a defense mechanism to keep her own mind from leaving her. And as the story lengthens, Lakshmi's sentence structure shortens, her willingness to divulge the ornate detail with which she observes the world dissipating into her shame and guilt.