Summary Of Sold By Patricia Mccormick

The novel Sold was published by Patricia McCormick in the year 2006. McCormick talks about how she decided to make people aware of the ‘red-light districts’ where sex trade and prostitution takes place in India during one of her interviews. The story has been written in a series of vignettes almost like poetry. McCormick is said to have adopted this style instead of regular paragraph style because it better highlights a topic which ‘is inherently so fractured’. Sometimes, the chapters are only one or two sentences long. ‘After five days of no food and water I don't even dream.’ From the chapter ‘After Five Days’.
McCormick tells us the story of a girl named Lakshmi living in Nepal who later on faces prostitution in Calcutta, a red-light district

The journey is a kind of transition for Lakshmi, as well as the reader. Here we come back to the symbolization of the roof that we talked about earlier. ‘Roofs made of metal scraps […] roofs made of heavy paper […] roofs made of sheets […] but no roofs of gold’. With no signs of a ‘roof of gold’ we connect to the prosperity and dreams of people in the city. In between the journey, Lakshmi sees a girl her age getting shamed in front of everyone and many homeless people. ‘All around us, people shuffle along, heads down, eyes empty, as the dust churns at their feet.’. The symbolism is the connection to her life in Nepal where life was as tough as this. This implies that life is not really going to get better, but worse. ‘My bundle is light. My burden heavy.” Through this, we see how Lakshmi feels already and we understand that she knows of the kinds of pain she might have to bare. But although she has matured for a girl her age, we understand her innocence in the way she describes

The irony of the name speaks for itself as the only people who are indeed happy are Mumtaz and the men who violate the girls. This title is a bit of a connection to Lakshmi’s life as she is meant to understand that not everything that is perceived correct is indeed correct. It also makes us ponder upon how she is meant to take in the little happiness of life. In Happiness House, she is repeatedly drugged and raped. Mumtaz puts Lakshmi in a room and locks it from the outside. Figuratively, locks are considered methods of control. Her freedom is ‘locked’ just like her dreams and Lakshmi experiences this first-hand when she is taken straight to a room to get violated by a man and is then locked inside when incompliant. About 2/3 of the book takes place in the Happiness House where Lakshmi learns more about the kinds of events that she will have to bare until her debt is paid