The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

“She was brimful of sadness for no particular reason, just a poignancy, a melancholy that comes from eating such royal food when your life is so very empty…Or was it the phone call to Sonia that had unsettled her, bringing in the big world and the knowledge that other people out there lived lives in fresh snow hills eating blueberry pie?”

Desai zooms into Mina Foi’s interiority, juxtaposing Mina’s emptiness against the material abundance of the food she enjoys on her birthday. With the rhetorical question that ties Mina’s emptiness to Sonia’s sadness, Desai is suggesting that Mina has never probed into the root causes of her feelings until that very day. Sonia therefore functions as a mirror into Mina’s secret suffering.

“Why did she tell him such a private detail immediately? Because her condition of winter loneliness had grown acute, and she felt compelled to tell her most compelling stories so she would be attractive and they could know each other quickly, profoundly, so she could relieve her solitude.”

In this passage, Desai hints at Sonia’s naivety, which makes her susceptible to Ilan’s manipulation. The hypophora in this passage demystifies Sonia’s vulnerability by revealing her eagerness to charm Ilan. She sees Ilan’s company as means to an end, though she does not consider what it will cost her.

“There were no children at the dinner party Mama and Papa were attending at the home of their friends Neil and Daljit Singh because there were no children in India anymore in the homes of successful parents of a successful class. The children were in Geneva, Hong Kong, Sydney, London, New York, and Vermont. They were at Harvard, Oxford, Siemens, the United Nations, Microsoft, Amnesty, Seagram, McKinsey, the World Bank, Sloan Kettering, and Hewitt College.”

Desai uses metonymy in this passage to define the milieu that Sonia’s parents belong to. Instead of describing the physical details of the dinner party, she accounts for the children’s absence by placing them in locations that imply their families’ privilege. Desai also hints at the self-satisfied air of this milieu by referring to them as the “successful parents of a successful class,” emphasizing the repeated word.

“Sonia writing this story felt guilty. Wasn’t she betraying her aunt, who couldn’t withstand another betrayal? She wondered also whether she was not damning herself. What you write, don’t you become?”

This passage underscores this influence that Ilan has on Sonia’s artistic development. Sonia ponders on the moral quandary of using Mina’s story to advance her art. The multiple rhetorical questions signal her knowledge that she is doing something wrong, yet she does not want to challenge Ilan’s advice as she has no other direction to guide her craft.

“‘In a love marriage, everything can be mismatched,’ said Dadaji. ‘The person might be rich, poor, high caste, low caste, ugly, or beautiful. But in an arranged marriage, it is the family’s duty to align each matter.’”

In the novel, marriage is a symbolic platform for The Tensions Between Tradition and Modernity. The contrast in this passage highlights this, distinguishing love marriage and arranged marriage. Dadaji frames love marriage as a high-risk proposition, hoping to scare younger people off with the probability of error. When he frames arranged marriage as the family’s burden, however, he subtly erases the individual agency of those involved in the marriage. This suggests that arranged marriage is designed to benefit those making the arrangement, not those who are involved in it.

“Even in this country, where he’d assumed love was different from the Indian version, it was not a private endeavor, but all about being a public event. If you didn’t stamp and stamp love with legitimacy and acknowledgment, and stamp it some more, silver and gold, with further legalities and recognitions, the ghost of future lost love infiltrated and your love became irrevocably unformed, the lack folded into its substance.”

This passage points to Sunny’s awareness of The Illusory Nature of the American Dream. His life in the United States is described as a constant performance, something that relies on external validation to feel authentic. This explains Sunny’s removal from his life in New York, which does not fully belong to him since he cannot validate it himself.

“Sunny registered himself hypocritical, too, when he looked away from other Indians he saw on the street—Indians who were also avidly ignoring him, trying to make it in America by avoiding one another, as if it was better to be one Indian than two Indians, better to be two Indians than three Indians. And better an Indian in New York than an Indian in India. Even more so an Indian in a village in France that was empty of other Indians entirely, especially Indians of the same class who would undo your poise, shine a light upon your shames, your lies.”

This passage introduces a refrain that Desai uses frequently throughout the novel (“… better to be one Indian than two Indians…”), before spinning out into variations that clarify how tokenism increases a migrant’s chances of inclusion into their adopted community. This emphasizes the challenge of Sunny’s loneliness, which frames isolation as a prerequisite for his Americanization and exposes The Illusory Nature of the American Dream.

“Art is how you climb out of the abyss after you’ve made yourselves into beasts. You have to hook on and rebuild yourself from outside in.”

This passage foreshadows the resolution of Sonia’s character arc by describing art as a restorative tool and hinting at The Role of Strife in Personal Growth. Key to this foreshadowing is the reference to “beasts,” which resonates with the ghost hound that vanishes into Sonia. The ghost hound’s vanishing is crucial to Desai’s metaphor as it symbolizes Sonia’s ability to internalize an external threat, which she transforms into art through her surrealist stories.

“This would be the time Sonia and Papa would grow close, not merely father and daughter, but two wounded individuals negotiating life together—careful not to ask prying questions, in case they would be asked questions in turn, glad to have each other even if Papa often wished she were not there to see his indignity and even if she often worried her father would intuit her shame.”

During Sonia and Manav’s time together they both acknowledge each other as emotional support, but are reluctant to activate that support because they are afraid of being vulnerable with each other. This underscores Manav’s fear of humiliation, a character trait that Sonia has inherited, which will later affect her relationship with Sunny.

“When Mama had asked her why she had stopped writing stories, Sonia had not answered that a person cannot write a story if she looks at the world through someone else’s eyes, if his voice still speaks from inside her brain, if she doesn’t know if her thoughts are her thoughts, if she can’t tell what is true and what is not.”

This passage emphasizes the pervasiveness of Ilan’s influence on Sonia’s aesthetic sensibility. Through the trauma from the emotional abuse he inflicted, Ilan’s influence radically reshapes Sonia’s way of thinking, thus preventing her from writing the way she used to. Whereas Sonia used to worry that she had no direction, she now worries that she cannot act without considering Ilan’s opinion of her.

“Perhaps I want Sunny to know that his father, amongst all the men of his class, is not corrupt. I want him to be free from this family history. I want him to be free to be honorable.”

Sunny views his late father as the ideal he aspires to, someone who lives according to principles in contrast to his unprincipled mother. What complicates this aspiration is Ratan’s hope that Sunny frees himself from his family history, which can be misconstrued as an imperative to leave the country and move westward.

“It’s the premise of being American: You are an individual, therefore you are alone. Therefore you must be able to do everything by yourself.”

In this passage, Sunny resonates with Sonia’s observations on American individualism and loneliness, acknowledging The Illusory Nature of the American Dream. While they do not directly reveal her experiences in Vermont and New York, they are specific enough to apply to Sunny’s self-alienation, which no one else has managed to relate to. This observation endears Sunny to Sonia, laying the foundation for their relationship.

“‘I am not going to die without knowing my country, my language, and learning who I am.’ All of us Indians who are educated to be Westernized are fated to make the same journey. If we have any intelligence or any heart, we have to search for ourselves backward…You may think it a fine thing to be in America, and when you’re young, making your way, there’s enough reason to be anywhere in the world—but eventually you begin to wonder who you should have become instead of the person that you are.”

Manav also resonates with Sunny’s experience in the United States, driving the latter character’s desire to become closer with the Shah family as a counterpoint to his own. Crucially, Manav’s insight foreshadows the resolution of Sunny’s character arc, which revolves around looking back to India as the place where he can undo his Americanization and, consequently, his self-alienation.

“On the flight home she kept returning to her tiny theft. It marred her conscience. Why had she wanted it? After causing harm to a priceless antique, she had stolen a bar of soap. It revealed her sad, small state of being to herself.”

This passage exemplifies Babita’s covetous character, which draws her to possess even small objects of luxury as a form of indulgence. Notable to this passage is the brief guilt she experiences while reflecting on her theft. Her conscience awakens her to the fact that she uses luxury to fill the emptiness of her life, which is easier to possess than more substantial things like the authentic connection she fails to build with everyone from Ratan to Sonia.

“‘You’d have to be a hundred people in one.’

‘Meanwhile here you can get by with being one-hundredth of a person—you don’t have to do anything.’

‘Other than give orders to poor people.’”

The quick rhythm of Sunny and Sonia’s dialogue in this passage demonstrates their chemistry while also deepening the novel’s themes on cultural identity and The Illusory Nature of the American Dream. They contrast American individualism against Indian collectivism, which they suggest is also an exploitative system. Implicit in their agreement is the acknowledgment of similar experience, which helps them to resolve the kinds of loneliness they face.

“But if you love, you fear, thought Sonia. You fear and believe you will lose love. But if you don’t love, you also fear. You feel safe only when you are alone and cannot be betrayed, yet you feel unsafe being alone.”

In this passage, Desai uses antimetabole to reflect Sonia’s complicated relationship to love and fear. Fear was an essential element of her relationship with Ilan, which causes it to recur in her relationship with Sunny as she fears telling him the truth about her past. This suggests that it is better to live in fear without love, but that would leave Sonia alone, which she does not want for fear of her life.

“If the world was to maintain its optimism—its generosity and warmth—on the fact of Italy existing, then it was important that Italy remain intact and uncomplicated. If you believed in its beauty, it would save you. Maybe if there was ever a crisis in Italy, this belief held by others would save Italy, too, for we’re all better when we are loved, when we believe we know who we are, and when people tell us they know who we are and their vision is gentle.”

Sonia reconciles her privilege as a tourist by viewing Italy as a place stripped of political subtext and complication, which she sees as an aspirational state for personal identity. Sunny judges her for taking this view, oblivious to the fact that the alternative for Sonia is to live in a constant state of dispossession. Sonia’s idealization of Italy ignores Italy’s own complicated past, already filled with many a “crisis,” suggesting that she is idealizing Italy the way Sunny once idealized America.

“In her hand, she held Badal Baba. Your gods are impotent when you don’t save them. When you don’t save them, they cannot save you. If you lose them, how can you know yourself?”

In this passage, Sonia equates the loss of Badal Baba—a key symbol in the text—to the loss of herself, reflecting The Role of Strife in Personal Growth. The fact that both appear in Ilan’s painting of Sonia doubles down on her sense of displacement. Not only has Ilan invaded Sonia’s thoughts, but he has also co-opted the symbol of her inherited legacy, transforming it into a symbol of his power over her. To free herself from Ian, she must also free herself from what the amulet symbolizes for her.

“Was it Sonia’s eye? It was. No, it wasn’t—or was it? Sunny had a flash of insight: The eyes in the portraits by Ilan were all Ilan’s eyes—everyone he painted became trapped in his gaze, everyone he painted turned into him.”

Sunny’s point-of-view revises Sonia’s earlier observation that she had seen her eye in the painting inside Ilan’s Vermont studio. Sonia mistook Ilan’s eyes for her own because of his influence. This passage signals Sunny’s growing understanding for Sonia’s situation, as it visualizes her dispossession while also representing Ilan’s vanity as he inserts himself into his oeuvre.

“But you should not marry someone you don’t love, and you cannot promise to love him had he survived, when he is dead because of your lack of love.”

Pushed to her limit, Babita experiences a moment of private guilt, one that undoes her delusions of self-forgiveness and absolution. As discussed in an earlier passage, Babita loves luxury because it distracts her from the emptiness of her life. Stripped of her assets and wealth, Babita has nothing to fall back on but the truth of her infidelity, which makes her feel accountable for Ratan’s death.

“An immigrant story is also a ghost story and a murder story. You become a ghost, the people left behind become ghostly, sometimes you kill them by the heartlessness of leaving, sometimes you psychically kill yourself…An immigrant story is a story about becoming an alien, to others and to yourself.”

Satya cements The Illusory Nature of the American Dream as a theme by explaining how the American Dream alienates the people who come to the United States to pursue it. Desai relies on redundant metaphors, comparing immigrants to ghosts and aliens, to emphasize the degree of displacement that immigrants experience during their pursuit of the American Dream.

“If you had no face, was it the path to no nationality, no gender, no religion, no race? Was this not a relief—to have no attributes? Or was it only the powerful who could indulge in such romantic notions? How could one suggest such a solution to the dispossessed?”

Sonia has long idealized the facelessness of Badal Baba as an aspirational quality, one that can simplify her and absolve her of the complications of her life. In this passage, Sonia realizes that simplicity is a privileged attribute. Only people like Ilan can live without the burdens of identity because their privilege insulates them against consequences. The same can never be true for Sonia, who experiences self-displacement because she depends on Ilan’s privilege.

“How many people are stalked by a ghost hound? That’s like meeting the actual Serpent in the Garden. The theater helped me. I thought, I will use everything I learned from this person and put it all in a play. I realized it wasn’t that my partner was famous and I was anonymous; it was that I was anonymous so he could be famous. In the end, the hell weirdly felt worth it. But I had to create that ruthlessness—and that ruthlessness I learned from him!”

Darius’s advice reflects The Role of Strife in Personal Growth. He reframes the traumatic experiences of Sonia’s relationship and the ghost hound as sources of emotional truth, which provide the foundation for her art. This passage effectively calls back to Ilan’s assertion that art can help people to reclaim themselves after they have become beasts, transforming tragedy into inspiration.