Poverty in the novel "The Village By The Sea"

In the novel, poverty is what the main characters and their families and friends suffer from. They lack life's necessities, clean water, sturdy shelter, healthy and sufficient food, medical care etc. This means they struggle through their days fighting to obtain these basic needs, even though they are the simplest of things. We are shown in the novel how Lila is left to do all the chores because of her sick mother and young children. Her mother is sick due to nobody understanding what is wrong and there is no-one educated enough to tell them what to do. They are also unable to take her to a hospital because they have no means of getting there. Lila also has to do the chores herself because her younger sister need to get an education from the nearby school, whereas Lila will never have that kind of schooling. Hari, her brother, has also been forced to give up schooling to get a job in order to make that little bit of extra money that they desperately need for food and other basics. With their small amount of earned money, they can only afford the most plain, cheapest things that do not provide sufficient nutrients for the body, especially not for a sick person.

Throughout the story we are given plenty of examples of poverty, whether it is in the small village where families are very independent or in the large city of Bombay where there are lots of people and we are told of the crowded slums. These slums are a prime example of poverty. Hundreds are cramped into tiny tin shelters that give little or no protection from the weather and should not even be big enough for one to live inside. But whole families cower inside. Water is even harder to come by and food is almost a luxury.

"The Village By the Sea" describes these situations of extreme poverty where the characters still manage to survive somehow. Through sheer determination we are shown how they pull through.