Sold

= Sold = Patricia McCormick

Within a remote village in Nepal, thirteen year old Lakshmi lives with her family. After a monsoon, the family's crops are washed away, leaving them poorer than before. Wanting to help support her starving family, Lakshmi agrees to go away to the city to work as a maid. What Lakshmi doesn't know is that her greedy stepfather has just sold her. She is not to become a maid who will send her wages back to her desperately poor mother, but she is to be enslaved in a brothel. Will Lakshmi ever be able to escape?

Click on the following link:[|Book Browse] HOMEWORK : Check out the website Book Browse (above link). After reading "A Letter from Kolkata" AND the author interview, respond to the following statement made by the author who quoted Elie Weisel: "Let us remember: what hurts the victim the most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander". How does Weisel's statement apply to Lakshmi or others like her? Or to oppressed people throughout history as well? Post your response on the discussion page of this wiki and reply to two other students as well. Watch conventions!!!

= Discussion Guide =

1. What is Lakshmi’s life like in her Nepal mountain home? What events create the need for her to go into the city?

2. Discuss the vignette entitled “Everything I Need to Know Now” (page 15). What do you think of the cultural mandates that she must live by? Compare it to the vignette of the same title that appears later when she is in the city (141). How does it represent all the changes in her life?

3. Did you suspect bad intentions on the part of the “auntie” and “uncle” who escorted Lakshmi? Why do you think Lakshmi herself was not suspicious? What does this show you about her character?

4. What things does Lakshmi wonder about on her journey? What ordinary objects fascinate her? How does this innocence help seal her fate?

5. How does Mumtaz gain control over Lakshmi? What tactics does she use to own her both physically and emotionally? What punishment does she exact on girls who disobey or betray her?

6. Describe the other girls and women in the brothel. How do they accept or rail against their lives there? What does Lakshmi learn from them? In the end, what happens to them?

7. For the festival of brothers and sisters, Harish gives Lakshmi a new pencil. This small act of kindness undoes her.Why do you think this “undoes” her? How do others reach out to help one another at the brothel?

8. What does despair look like? How does Lakshmi prevent her own despair from destroying her hope? Is it destroyed in others? How?

9. What happens when Monica leaves the brothel to return to the family she has supported? Do you think Lakshmi’s own ama would treat her the same way upon her return? What about her stepfather? What makes you think so or not?

10. What was the most disturbing part of this story for you? What facts crawled under your skin and continue to haunt you? Do you think there is anything you can do to help? What?

= Elements of a Novel: = Describe the following literary terms using the novel __Sold:__ Plot Point of View Theme Setting Main characters/Minor characters (limit to 5 minor) -are they dynamic or static? Conflict Rising action Climax Falling action Resolution