Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Caste, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Caste, Race, and Social Division in the U.S.
Caste as a Global Problem
How Caste Sustains Itself
The Costs of Caste
Summary
Analysis
Wilkerson shares an anecdote about a man who’d been born to the highest caste in India—the Brahmins—but experienced an awakening. As a child, he’d been anointed in a Brahmin ritual with a sacred thread that hung around his neck and draped across his shoulders and chest. This was his initiation into Brahmin manhood, and he was to wear the sacred thread at all times and replace it only if it became frayed or polluted. When the man, as a young boy, watched his father refuse to punish a Dalit, he was crushed when his father fled the village because of the shame he faced for failing to uphold the caste system.
This passage shows that while many narratives about caste suggest that the caste system is fixed—and that the participants of any given caste system are comfortable in or resigned to their places in it—the truth is much more complicated. The young man’s father clearly struggled with the expectations his caste position placed on him—and yet he couldn’t deal with the shame and stigma associated with rejecting his caste.
Themes
Years later, the young man could no longer see the Dalit as subservient people who belonged at the bottom of society—he began to admire them and loathe the caste system. He saw his own superiority as an illusion, and he began to feel a great sense of shame of his own. Eventually, he ripped off the sacred thread, calling it a “poisonous snake around [his] neck.” With his “fake crown” discarded, he felt he could truly begin his life’s journey.
This passage illustrates the fact that it’s necessary for those who have historically benefited from caste to awaken to the “poison” caste creates in societies. By realizing how arbitrary and false caste systems are, these people can reject them entirely and set an example for others to do the same.
Themes
