Mala's life is one of intense suffering, but not just any kind of suffering. She experiences the unique existential pain of depending on someone for support who dehumanizes her. Her own father plays the victim of his fate and uses his entitled anger fester into a hatred that leads him to be perfectly unfaithful to anyone but himself. He abuses her sexually along with her siblings, dominating the helpless children in many emotional, psychological, and sexual ways.
By the end of the novel, a question has been posited for the reader to consider and respond to: if Mala were not literally insane, would she be guilty of self-defense or first-degree murder? One can easily enforce a legalistic opinion of morality, but the insanity that leads to her being legally deemed unfit to stand trial is itself evidence that the father caused unfathomable mental suffering in Mala's life. Mala's decision to murder is still hard to stomach, however, and this leaves the reader in a moral conundrum.
The novel also invites a kind of empathy that might challenge an emotionally attuned reader in a serious way. The reader can encounter the matters by face value, with cold, logical analysis, or they can put themselves into the shoes of these children and their relationship to their father. What the reader discovers by choosing empathy is an experience of true pain, sorrow, betrayal, and horror. What's worse is that the severe nature of Mala's family abuse makes it hard for her to have much of a life outside that suffering. When she tries to go the way of life, her father punishes her worse than before and brutally rapes her. Mala is a portrait of true victimhood, and her father is a portrait of victimhood built on hatred and entitlement.
