The Caste System By Mashasweta Devi - 902 Words

â€Å"Please don’t play your games with a helpless poor girl† declared Dhowli. The Misra boy leaned in closer to her replying, â€Å"I’m not playing games.† Dhowli then shouted back â€Å" You’ll leave after you tire of the game, and what will become of me? Am I to be like Jhale? No, deota, not that.† (238). I’m hesitate to keep reading after this line thinking to myself how I feel sorry for Dhowli and who she is going to become since getting pregnant with a Misra boy who is dominant in the caste system. Dhowli creates an ambitious, courageous, and philosophical figure in the short story â€Å"Dhowli† by Mashasweta Devi. In the short story the caste system is well defined showing of social stratification of two opposite levels of the social chain in India. To an American reader the foreignness of how India treats single mothers is how this short story stands out. Dhowli plays the role of an untouchable that is very poor who gets pregnant by a Misra boy, which is on the top of the caste system. Dhowli and her mother work on the Misra boy’s family’s land doing the worst chores for the littlest about of millet and grain for Dhowli and her mother to live off of. The chores consist of sweeping the garden, while managing the wind, and tending to the goats. The word about Dhowli’s pregnancy spreads through the village rapidly. When Dhowli goes outside she gets stares and has to watch her every move since she is an untouchable and people do horrible things to untouchables. When the Misra’s family