Because the crisis of the book is the suicide of the family mother, the meaning of the novel has to do with that role reversal. By escaping her private torture in a lonely way, her mental health issues grow and fester like a virus, and her suicide is depicted as a kind of explosion where that virus gets airborne and starts infecting the whole family. Because one person in the family was gripped by hopelessness, the ability to maintain hope goes down for the whole family. Almost instantly, Aunty is dragged into an addiction.
Her addiction to gambling is evidence that her sister's suicide took a toll on her hope, because hope is the thing that helps people out of addictions. Without hope, it becomes nearly impossible for a person in serious suffering (like Aunty clearly is; she is mourning her best friend and sister, and because it was suicide, Aunty also deals with feelings of remorse and regret, as well as anger against her sister which makes everything worse). Then, her propensity to gamble kicks in.
Also, her addiction to gambling is a sign of her decreasing health, because what she needs in order to win is to "get lucky," but obviously, life has dealt her an unimaginably painful hand of cards, and she is ignoring the real suffering by subjecting herself to a smaller hope, the hope of a simple win. When May is raped, it is an absolute decimation. Her hope is removed, and the emotional pain of having been raped makes her hyper-aware of her need for her mother's love, but her mother decided not to be there for her, she thinks.
The reader needs to understand that there is hope in the novel, but is hidden. The rape also signals that May will be depressed and lonely like her mother. So, May finds herself on a painfully ironic path. As she seeks to forgive her mother, she will have to endure intense depression and loneliness, so that if she loves her mother enough to forgive her, she can redeem her mother by choosing to live in intimacy with her family and friends. Because May has a hard time piecing this together, the dilemma seems hopeless, but in the fullness of time, there could be healing and redemption in her future—especially if she can discover the hope her mother desperately needed.
