Loss and Grief

Throughout The Covenant of Water, the author saturates the narrative with instances of tragedy and death in order to create a complex examination of loss and grief. Such tragedies and deaths appear in each of the characters' storylines, forcing Big Ammachi, Digby, Philipose, Elsie, and Mariamma among others to acquaint themselves with sorrow and suffering. In the context of Big Ammachi’s story, she loses her family and home when her uncle forces her to marry "a man of good means" when she is just 12 years old (4). Not long later, her stepson JoJo dies, and her husband passes swiftly thereafter. Meanwhile, Digby becomes acquainted with death when his mother commits suicide. When he is a young man, his lover Celeste burns to death in a fire. Philipose and Elsie later suffer the loss of their young son Ninan when he is impaled by “a...