The novel is set in Kattuppati, a remote Tamil Nadu village in Southern India. Kumaresan and Saroja, newly married, arrive by bus to live at Kumaresan's house on a rock in the village. Their marriage is an inter-caste one, performed in secret after they eloped from Saroja's house in Tholur, and Kumaresan believes that no one shall know about Saroja's different caste if they deny it. When they reach their house, Marayi, Kumaresan's mother, curses her ill-luck that her son married Saroja. Her dirge attracts the attention of many village residents who flock to the house to see the new bride and tease her about the marriage. They do not believe that a person as fair as Saroja would belong to the same caste as them. As days pass by, Saroja has to put up with Marayi's constant insults and the village folks' questions and comments about her caste. A visit to Kumaresan's grandparents turns sour as his grandfather hits him and says that he has brought disgrace upon the family. Saroja is reminded about their affair in Tholur where Kumarasena had come to work with Bhai Anna's help. Kumarasena worked in a soda-bottle packing and distributing unit for Soda Bottle Bhai and was Saroja's neighbor. They often stole glances at each other until some soda bottles explode in Kumaresan's hands and Saroja left him some food. Knowing that her father and brother would never approve of their marriage, Saroja ran away with Kumarasena to get married. At their village, a council decides to boycott them from any social gathering and a public well. Kumarasena and Saroja are still invited to a coming-of-age ceremony of a distant relative from another village. Kumarasena tries to settle down with a soda-bottle distributing business spread across a few villages. He takes Saroja with him to Virichipalayam, where he has found a shop with money raised from friends. Saroja hopes he would settle down in Virichipalayam and away from his village. They buy a plateful of presents for the ceremony they are invited to. They decide to go directly to the temple where the ceremony will be held rather than walk down with other people from their village. At the ceremony, Kumarasena is humiliated by his uncle and asked to leave immediately. Back home, Kumarasena discovers that Saroja is pregnant. Saroja believes that a child's coming would convince Kumarasena to leave the village with her. Kumarasena has to leave the village for a couple of days to visit his shop but Saroja urges him to come back at night however late it is. That night, Saroja goes to the bushes near the rock to defecate and overhears Marayi conspiring with other villagers to kill her in Kumaresan's absence. Determined not to get caught, she hides herself deep within the shrubbery. When the villagers realize where she is, they set the bushes alight from all sides with Saroja within it, just as Kumaresan's cycle is heard returning to the village.
Themes
Describing the subject, Aniruddhan Vasudevan, the translator of the novel wrote in the translator's note:
Caste intolerance
's description of the novel describes its caste theme, "Despite the strident denials of the young couple, the villagers strongly suspect that Saroja must belong to a different caste. It is only a matter of time before their suspicions harden into certainty and, outraged, they set about exacting their revenge. A devastating tale of innocent young love pitted against chilling savagery, Pyre conjures a terrifying vision of intolerance." A review says that the caste atrocities in the novel indicates "violence and complicity... by the assent of the majority". Throughout the story, Saroja and Kumaresan have to face caste-based humiliations in the form of fiery words and dehumanising physical abuse. Though Saroja's exact caste or its hierarchical relationship with Kumaresan's caste is unknown to the villagers, her fair skin, as opposed to their dark skins, becomes reason enough for them to suspect her caste. The inter-caste marriage becomes a reason for defilement of the caste purity of the entire village from which, therefore, Kumaresan and his family is boycotted.
Contrast between city and village life
The novel is set in multiple locations and life in the city is often contrasted with life in the village. Through symbols of "hard rocky surface" and a "barren, harsh" landscape, the village describes the "ossified impermeable social structure organised around caste lines which does not allow any social fluidity". In contrast, the city is free, where " can flash a smile and is reciprocated by a smile". Reviewers have also pointed out the rich evocation of the Kongu land in the story, accepting that Murugan's "eloquent' language and "razor-sharp metaphors" bring nature to life in the village scenes, especially with paragraphs like: One review, however, criticizes the representation of country life as bland, something that Murugan has painted as "alien and exotic" in order to engage the reader who has never been to rural India. Another review, which advocates similar concerns, dismisses it as an issue with the setting of the novel, which it claims is set in the 1980s.
