Genre
Fiction
Setting and Context
Kerala, 20th century India
Narrator and Point of View
The Narrator is third person omniscient.
Tone and Mood
Tragic, Depressing, Hopelessness, Anxious.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Paru Amma is the protagonist and Society is the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The subordinate is the story of the orphan woman Paru Amma, her life is full of struggle, but she wants her daughter to lead a good life, but after knowing the bad intention of the commissioner towards her daughter makes her unsettled.
Climax
Paru kills her only daughter just to save her daughter's dignity and to free her from this wayward life.
Foreshadowing
Gopalan proposes Paru, even though he's engaged to another woman foreshadows, that he's not going to marry Paru.
Understatement
Being an orphan and a vulnerable girl, she decides to give birth to her child and raises her daughter as a single mother.
Allusions
'The Subordinate' alludes to many real incidents of those women who live alone in this patriarchal society that has inspired Saraswati Amma's story.
Imagery
Paru Amma watches Lakshmi kutty as she put flowers in her wet hair, and offer flowers to the idol of Krishna at that moment Paru strikes on her, and the blow kills Lakshmi on the spot.
Paradox
Paradox Paru murders her daughter because she doesn't want to give the same life as hers.
Parallelism
There's a parallel between the life of Paru Amma and her daughter. The wayward life style that Paru Amma chooses when she was young but ended up regretting and doesn't want her daughter to live this kind of life.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
N/A
