Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, sexual violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and gender discrimination.

“Darkness. It’s interesting how, as humans, we are conditioned to be fearful of the dark.”

In the opening line of the novel, the narrator, Demi, uses the plural first-person pronoun “we” to include the reader in her first statement. Arya returns to the idea of darkness later in the novel: “Humans aren’t afraid of the dark because of the lack of light; we’re afraid of the dark because we fear the places our own minds will take us” (317). This meditation on darkness foreshadows the Ivory family’s use of sensory deprivation as psychological torture, highlighting The Psychological Impact of Isolation.

“If there is one thing in life that I know with absolute certainty, it’s that there is a vast difference between surviving and thriving.”

In the first line of the first chapter, Demi articulates the class differences that are at the thematic heart of the novel. People in poverty, like her, struggle to merely survive. The rich, who use Wealth as a Tool for Manipulation, take survival for granted and focus on thriving.

“He didn’t think a well-raised Indian girl would steal from one of her own. Sadly, I wasn’t raised right. I was barely raised at all. I just existed.”

This echoes the previous quote and gives the reader more information about Demi’s character. Her physical features can easily be identified as Indian by other Indians living in the US. However, her class identity sets her apart from other members of her racial identity; her parents sold her to a human trafficker.