The novel explores the role of family on the individual through Uma’s formative experience in India and Arun’s post-adolescent experience living abroad in Massachusetts. While the family is the central agent of individual socialization, Uma and Arun’s upbringing demonstrates how rigid authority and parental control can both arrest, in the case of Uma, and stifle, in the case of Arun, the individual’s awareness and realization of identity.

In India, Papa and Mama are figurative dictators, completely controlling and micro-managing every step of child development and identity formation. This control is particularly glaring after the birth of their first son, Arun. The name Arun was already given to their teenage daughter, and they force her to yield up her name and identity and be forever after known as Aruna, an act that leads to Aruna’s own problematic search for self-assertion.  

Beyond their ability to control identity, the parents subject their children to limited, gender-based definitions of success. For Arun, the only boy, success can only come through successful scholarship, passing his exams and earning college acceptance. For the two girls, Uma and Aruna, accomplishment means an advantageous marriage, one that will advance the family’s social and financial position.