| The God of Small Things | |
|---|---|
1st edition |
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| Author(s) | Arundhati Roy |
| Country | India |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | IndiaInk, India |
| Publication date | 1997 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | 0060977493 |
| OCLC Number | 37864514 |
The God of Small Things (1997) is the debut novel of Indian author Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who should be loved, and how. And how much." The book is a description of how the small things in life affect people's behavior and their lives. The book won the Booker Prize in 1997.
The God of Small Things is Roy's first book, and as of 2010[update], is her only novel. Completed in 1996, the book took four years to write. The potential of the story was first recognized by Pankaj Mishra, an editor with HarperCollins, who sent it to three British publishers. Roy received half-a-million pounds in advances, and rights to the book were sold in 21 countries.
While generally praised, the book did receive some criticism for its verbosity and controversial subject matter.[1]
Contents |
The story, told here in chronological order, although the novel shifts around in time, primarily takes place in a town named Ayemenem or Aymanam now part of Kottayam in Kerala state of India. The temporal setting shifts back and forth from 1969, when fraternal twins Rahel and Estha are seven years old, to 1993, when the twins are reunited at age 31. Much of the story is written in a viewpoint relevant to the seven-year-old children. Malayalam words are liberally used in conjunction with English. Some facets of Kerala life which the novel captures are communism, the caste system, and the Keralite Syrian Christian way of life.
Without sufficient dowry for a marriage proposal, Ammu Ipe becomes desperate to escape her ill-tempered father (Pappachi) and her bitter, long-suffering mother (Mammachi). She finally convinces her parents to let her spend a summer with a distant aunt in Calcutta. To avoid returning to Ayemenem, she marries a man who assists managing a tea estate whom she later discovers to be a heavy alcoholic who beats her and attempts to prostitute her to his boss so that he can keep his job. She gives birth to two children, fraternal twins, Estha and Rahel, yet ultimately leaves her husband and returns to live with her mother and brother, Chacko, in Ayemenem.
Also living at their home in Ayemenem is Pappachi's sister, Baby Kochamma (Her real name being Navomi Ipe, but has been called Baby since she had become old enough to become an aunt). (Kochamma is an honorific name for a female.) As a young girl, Baby Kochamma had fallen in love with Father Mulligan, a young Irish priest who had come to Ayemenem to study Hindu scriptures. In order to get closer to him, Baby Kochamma had become a Roman Catholic and joined a convent, against her father's wishes. After a few lonely months in the convent, Baby Kochamma had realized that her vows brought her no closer to the man she loved, with her father eventually rescuing her from the convent, sending her to America for an education, where she obtained a diploma in ornamental gardening. Baby Kochamna remained unmarried for the rest of her life, with her unrequited love for Father Mulligan turning to bitterness. Throughout the book, Baby Kochamma delights in the misfortune of others and manipulates events to bring down calamity upon Ammu and the twins.
While studying at Oxford, Chacko fell in love and married an English woman named Margaret (Mostly referred to in the novel as "Margaret Kochamma"). Shortly after the birth of their daughter Sophie (Mostly referred to as "Sophie Mol" in the novel, Mol meaning "little girl"), Margaret reveals that she had been having an affair with another man, Joe. They divorce and Chacko, unable to find a job, returns to India. After the death of Pappachi, Chacko returns to Ayemenem and takes over his mother's business, called Paradise Pickles and Preserves.
| “ | "It didn't matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings." - The God of Small Things [2] |
” |
When Margaret's second husband is killed in a car accident, Chacko invites her and Sophie to spend Christmas in Ayemenem. The day before Margarget and Sophie arrive, the family visits a theater to see "The Sound of Music", where Estha is molested by the "Orangedrink Lemondrink man", a beverage vendor. His fear stemming from this encounter factors into the circumstances that lead to the tragic events at the heart of the narrative.
On the way to the airport to pick them up, the family (Chacko, Ammu, Estha, Rahel, and Baby Kochamma) encounters a group of communist protesters. The protesters surround the car and force Baby Kochamma to wave a red flag and chant a communist slogan, humiliating her. Rahel thinks she sees Velutha, an untouchable servant that works in the pickle factory, in the crowd. Velutha's alleged presence with the communist mob makes Baby Kochamma associate him with her humiliation at their hands, and she begins to harbor a deep hatred towards him.
Velutha is an untouchable (the lowest caste in India), a dalit. His family has been working for the Ipe family for generations. Velutha is an extremely gifted and accomplished carpenter and mechanic. His skills with repairing the machinery make him indispensable at the pickle factory, but result in resentment and hostility from the other, touchable factory workers.
Rahel and Estha form an unlikely bond with Velutha and come to love him, despite his untouchable status. It's her children's love for Velutha that causes Ammu to realize her attraction to him and eventually, she comes to "love by night the man her children love by day". They begin a short-lived affair that culminates in tragedy for the family.
When her relationship with Velutha is discovered, Ammu is locked in her room and Velutha is banished. In her rage, Ammu blames the twins for her misfortune and calls them the "millstones around her neck". Distraught, Rahel and Estha decide to run away. Their cousin Sophie Mol convinces them to take her with them. During the night, while trying to reach the abandoned house across the river, their boat capsizes and Sophie drowns.
Once Margaret Kochamma and Chacko return from Cochin, where they have been picking up airline tickets, Margaret sees Sophie's body lay out on the sofa. She vomits and can't stop crying and feels spiteful towards the twins because they survived. She hits Estha, even though she didn't know that crossing the river was his idea.
Baby Kochamma goes to the police and accuses Velutha of being responsible for Sophie's death. She claims that Velutha attempted to rape Ammu, threatened the family, and kidnapped the children. A group of policemen hunt Velutha down and savagely beat him for crossing caste lines. The twins witness this horrific scene and are deeply affected.
When the twins reveal the truth of Sophie's death to the Chief of Police, he is alarmed. He knows that Velutha is a communist, and is afraid that the wrongful arrest and beating of Velutha will cause unrest amongst the local communists. He threatens to hold Baby Kochamma responsible for falsely accusing Velutha. To save herself, Baby Kochamma tricks Rahel and Estha into accusing Velutha of Sophie's death. Velutha dies of his injuries.
Hearing of his arrest, Ammu goes to the police to tell the truth about their relationship. The police threaten her to make her leave the matter alone. Afraid of being exposed, Baby Kochamma convinces Chacko that Ammu and the twins are responsible for his daughter's death. Chacko kicks Ammu out of the house. Unable to find a job, Ammu is forced to send Estha to live with his father. Estha never sees Ammu again, and she dies alone and impoverished a few years later.
After a turbulent childhood and adolescence in India, Rahel goes to America to study. While there, she gets married, divorced and finally returns to Ayemenem after several years of working dead-end jobs. Rahel and Estha, both 31-years old, are reunited for the first time since they were children. In the intervening years, Estha and Rahel have been haunted by their guilt and grief-ridden pasts. Estha is perpetually silent and Rahel has a haunted look in her eyes. It becomes apparent that neither twin ever found another person who understands them in the way they understand each other. The twin's renewed intimacy ultimately culminates in them sleeping together.
In the last chapter of the book, 'The Cost of Living', the narrative is once again set in the 1969 time frame and describes Ammu and Velutha's first sexual encounter. It describes that "Instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. The Big Things ever lurked inside. They knew there was nowhere for them to go. They had no future. So they stuck to the Small Things". After each encounter, Ammu and Velutha make one promise to one another: "Tomorrow? Tomorrow." The novel ends on the optimistic note, "She kissed his closed eyes and stood up. Velutha with his back against the mangosteen tree watched her walk away. She had a dry rose in her hair. She turned to say it once again: 'Naaley.' Tomorrow."
Aleyooty Ammachi
Aleyooty Ammachi is Rahel and Estha's great-grandmother. Her portrait hangs prominently beside that of their great-grandfather, Reverend John Ipe, in the Ayemenem House.
Baba
Baba is Estha and Rahel's father. Ammu divorces him when the children are very young. He was a violent alcoholic who not only beat his wife and children, but attempted to prostitute his wife to his English employer. Baba has remarried, resigned from his job on a tea plantation, and has "more or less" stopped drinking when Estha moves in with him in Calcutta. When Estha is an adult, Baba sends him back to Ayemenem and emigrates to Australia.
Reverend E. John Ipe
Estha and Rahel's great-grandfather, the Reverend John Ipe had been known as Punnyan Kunju, or "Little Blessed One," since he was blessed by the Syrian Christian Patriarch at age seven.
Joe
Joe is Margaret Kochamma's second husband, who dies in a car accident shortly before Margaret and Sophie Mol travel to Ayemenem.
The Kathakali Men
Artists who perform the characters of Karna and Kunti in the traditional Hindu dancing that Rahel and Estha go to see.
Ammu
Ammu is Rahel and Estha's mother. She is a beautiful and sardonic woman who has been victimized first by her father and then her husband. While raising her children, she has become tense and repressed. Ammu grew up in Delhi but, because her father said that college was an unnecessary expense for a girl, was forced to live with her parents when they moved to Ayemenem. She met her future husband at a wedding reception. She later divorces him and returns to the Ayemenem House when he starts to abuse the twins.
Ammu's latent "Unsafe Edge," full of desire and "reckless rage," emerges during Sophie Mol's visit and draws her to Velutha. After the horrific climax to the affair, Ammu sends Estha to live with his father and leaves Rahel in the Ayemenem House while Ammu looks for work; but Ammu loses a succession of jobs because she is ill. Ammu dies alone in a cheap hotel at the age of thirty-one. Chacko has her cremated because the Syrian Christian Church will not bury her.
Baby Kochamma (Navomi Ipe)
Nicknamed "Baby," Pappachi's sister, Navomi Ipe Kochamma, is a judgmental old maid with tiny feet. Rahel thinks, "She's living her life backwards," because Baby Kochamma renounces the material world when she is young, but becomes very materialistic when she is old. Throughout her life, Baby Kochamma is an insecure, selfish, and vindictive person.
When she was a girl, Baby Kochamma fell in love with a handsome Irish monk named Father Mulligan who made weekly visits to her father. Although they did nothing more than flirt while talking about the Bible, when he moved to Madras she became a Roman Catholic and entered a convent in Madras in the hopes of being with him. After her hopes were crushed, she left the convent and traveled to the United States to study, returning to India obese and devoted to gardening. She develops a dislike to communism after an incident at the railway crossing. During the time of Sophie Mol's visit, Baby Kochamma is a nuisance who pesters the twins because she dislikes them and Ammu. She is later revealed to be cruel and insidious, because she is the one that convinces the twins to condemn Velutha; and it was due to her manipulations of Chacko that Ammu is forced to leave the house and Estha is returned to his father. In her old age, Baby Kochamma becomes a bitter and lonely woman addicted to television, after having locked herself inside the family house.
Chacko
Chacko is Ammu's intellectual and self-absorbed older brother. He was a charming but very untidy Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and he met Margaret while she was working in an Oxford café. Deeply in love with Margaret, in part because she never depended on him or adored him like a mother, he marries her without telling his family. She grows tired of his squalor within a year, however, and divorces him around the time that their daughter is born.
Between his divorce and Sophie Mol's death, Chacko grew fatter and became obsessed with balsawood airplanes, which he unsuccessfully attempted to fly. He was also unsuccessful at running the pickle factory, which started to lose money as soon as he attempted to expand the operation. A "self-proclaimed Marxist," Chacko attempts to be a benevolent employer and even plans to organize a union among his own workers. However, he is insistent that he is the sole owner of his factory, his house, and other possessions that he actually shares with women. Sophie Mol's death is completely devastating for him. After her death, he emigrates to Canada.
Estha
Estha, which is short for Esthappen Yako, is Rahel's twin brother. He is a serious, intelligent, and somewhat nervous child who wears "beige and pointy shoes" and has an "Elvis puff." His experience of the circumstances surrounding Sophie Mol's visit is somewhat more traumatic than Rahel's, beginning when he is sexually abused by the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man at the Abhilash Talkies theater. The narrator stresses that Estha's "Two Thoughts" in the pickle factory, which stem from this experience (that "Anything can happen to Anyone" and "It's best to be prepared") are critical in leading to his cousin's death.
Estha is the twin chosen by Baby Kochamma, because he is more "practical" and "responsible," to go into Velutha's cell and condemn him as their abductor. This trauma, in addition to being shipped (or "Returned") to Calcutta to live with his father, contributes to Estha becoming mute at some point in his childhood. Estha never went to college and acquired a number of habits, such as wandering on very long walks and obsessively cleaning his clothes. He is so close to his sister that the narrator describes them as one person, despite having been separated for most of their lives. He is repeatedly referred to as "Silent" in the book.
Mammachi (Soshamma Ipe)
An elegant woman in her old age although she is nearly blind, Mammachi is Rahel and Estha's grandmother. Brutally beaten by her husband, she nevertheless cries at his funeral and shares many of his values, including an extremely rigid view of the caste system. She began the pickle factory and ran it successfully, and she was an "exceptionally talented" violinist, although Pappachi disallowed her to take further lessons when he heard this. Mammachi loves Chacko with blind admiration and deeply dislikes Margaret Kochamma. Nevertheless, she tolerates and even facilitates Chacko's affairs with factory workers, although she is so horrified when she hears of Ammu's affair with Velutha that she attacks both Velutha and his father, and locks Ammu in her room. She is also partial to Sophie Mol than Rahel or Estha.
Margaret Kochamma
Margaret is Sophie Mol's mother and Chacko's ex-wife. She is from a strict, working-class London family and was working as a waitress in Oxford when she met Chacko. Marrying him because of his uncontrolled personality that made her feel free, Margaret soon realized that she did not need him to accept herself, and she divorced him. When her second husband Joe dies, Margaret accepts Chacko's invitation to Ayemenem for Christmas, and she is haunted by this decision for the rest of her life. When Margaret sees her daughter's body, she feels an irrational rage towards the twins and seeks out Estha several times to slap him.
Pappachi (Shri Benaan John Ipe)
Shri Benaan John Ipe, known in the family as Pappachi, is Rahel and Estha's grandfather. He was an "Imperial Entomologist" under British rule and an Anglophile whose greatest setback was not having named a moth that he discovered because government scientists failed to recognize it as a new species until later. Seventeen years older than his wife, he was extremely resentful of her and beat her regularly with a brass vase until Chacko ordered him never to do it again. Pappachi Kochamma also beat his daughter and smashed furniture, although in public he convinced everyone that he was compassionate and neglected by his wife. In his old age, he rode around in his blue Plymouth that he kept entirely to himself.
Rahel
Rahel is Ammu's daughter and Estha's younger sister by eighteen minutes. An intelligent and honest person who has never felt socially comfortable, she is something of a drifter, and several times the narrator refers to her as the quality "Emptiness." When she is a girl, her hair sits "on top of her head like a fountain" and she always wears red-tinted plastic sunglasses with yellow rims.
Although Ammu often chastises Rahel for being dirty and unsafe, she loves her very deeply, and Rahel is equally devoted to her mother. Rahel also loves Velutha and her brother, with whom she shares a "single Siamese soul." She is traumatized by Sophie Mol's drowning, Velutha's death, and Ammu's death. Although these events do not seem to deprive her of her quirkiness or brightness, they contribute to her sense of sadness and lack of direction in later life. After Ammu dies, Rahel drifts between schools, receiving little attention from Mammachi or Chacko. Rahel then enters an architecture school but never finishes the course, marries an American named Larry McCaslin, and lives with him in Boston until they are divorced. She moves to Washington, D.C. and works for several years as a waitress in an Indian restaurant and as a night clerk at a gas station before returning to Ayemenem to see Estha.
Kochu Maria
Kochu Maria is the family's "vinegar-hearted, short-tempered, midget cook." She does not speak any English and, although she has always "noticed everything," she eventually stops caring about how the house looks and becomes addicted to television.
Kochu Thomban
Kochu Thomban is the Ayemenem temple elephant. When Rahel sees him in the present day, he is no longer "Kochu Thomban" ("Little Tusker") but "Vellya Thomban" ("Big Tusker").
Kuttappen
Velutha's older brother, Kuttappen is paralyzed from the chest down and confined to his house, which he shares with his brother and father.
Inspector Thomas Mathew
The Kottayam police chief is a practical, cynical, and brutal man who deals carefully with the scandal of Sophie Mol's death and Ammu's affair with Velutha. He taps on Ammu's breasts and insults her when she comes to make a statement about Velutha because the police chief strongly believes in the conventional caste system.
Larry McCaslin
Larry is Rahel's American husband, whom she met at the college of architecture in Delhi while he was working on a doctoral thesis, and with whom she moves to Boston. He holds her "as though she was a gift" and notices a hollowness in Rahel's eyes that seems to contribute to their lack of understanding and eventual divorce.
Miss Mitten
Rahel and Estha's tutor whom they dislike, Miss Mitten is a Born Again Christian who scolds the twins for reading backwards. She is killed by a milk van.
Father Mulligan
Father Mulligan was Baby Kochamma's would-be lover. An Irish monk who came to Kerala to study Hindu scriptures "in order to be able to denounce them intelligently," he flirted with Baby Kochamma while ostensibly talking about the Bible. Eventually, he converts to Hinduism, staying in touch with Baby Kochamma, and dies of viral hepatitis.
Murlidharan
Perched on the milestone of an intersection, Murlidharan is the "level-crossing lunatic" the family encounters on their way to Cochin.
Comrade E. M. S. Namboodiripad
Chacko's hero and the leader of Kerala's democratically elected Communist government, Comrade Namboodiripad is a moderate, particularly during his second term.
Orangedrink Lemondrink Man
The man who works behind the refreshments counter at the Abhilash Talkies movie theater forces Estha to masturbate him. He looks like an "unfriendly jeweled bear" and deeply traumatizes Estha, who believes the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man will find him in Ayemenem.
Comrade Pillai
Comrade Pillai is "essentially a political man" who plots to become the leader of the Communist Party in Ayemenem. With many connections and building influence, he is involved in a number of business ventures, including making signs for the pickle factory. After he betrays Velutha because he wants to rid himself of any competition in the party ranks, Comrade Pillai lays the seeds for dissatisfaction among the workers of Paradise Pickles and organizes the unionization that contributes to the factory's collapse. This does not help him rise to power in the party, however.
Kalyani Pillai
Kalyani is Comrade Pillai's quiet wife.
Latha Pillai
Comrade Pillai's niece, Latha, recites a poem by Sir Walter Scott for Chacko.
Lenin Pillai
Lenin is Comrade Pillai's son. He is a slightly awkward boy who grows up to be a secretary in Delhi.
Kari Saipu
Kari Saipu is the "Black Sahib," the Englishman who took on traditional Indian customs. The twins know his house, which was unoccupied after Kari Saipu shot himself, as "the History House." This house is the location of Ammu and Velutha's meetings.
Sophie Mol
Sophie Mol is Chacko and Margaret's daughter. She is a frank and spirited English girl characterized by her bellbottoms and go-go bag. Although the twins are initially hostile towards her because they have been so insistently instructed about how to behave when she arrives, she manages to win them over, partly because she is charming and outgoing, and partly because she rejected the adults who kept fawning over her in favor of befriending Rahel and Estha.
One reason Sophie Mol's death is so important to the book's main themes is that she represents a combination of Indian and British identities. The narrator is careful to call her "Sophie," her English name, combined with "Mol," the phrase for "girl" in the local language of Malayalam. Although Sophie Mol never takes to Indian culture, she does make a great effort with the twins before she accidentally falls into the river and drowns.
Vellya Paapen
Velutha's father, Vellya is an "Old-World Paravan" who feels he is indebted to Mammachi for paying for his glass eye. He is tortured about his son's affair with Ammu and tells Mammachi about it.
Velutha
An Untouchable worker at the pickle factory and a close friend to Rahel and Estha, Velutha is blamed for killing Sophie Mol and raping Ammu. In fact, he has nothing to do with Sophie Mol's death, and he carries on a brief and voluntary affair with Ammu until Inspector Thomas Mathew's police officers beat Velutha until he is nearly dead.
Velutha's name means "White" in Malayalam, so-called because he has such dark skin. Mammachi noticed his prodigious talents in making and fixing things when he was young and convinced his father to send him to the Untouchables' School founded by her father-in-law. Velutha became an accomplished carpenter and mechanic, and acquired an assurance that scared his father because it was unacceptable among Untouchables. Velutha disappeared for four years and was hired by Mammachi upon his return to Ayemenem. A member of the Communist Party, he never quite fits into his role as an Untouchable, and he begins an extremely passionate affair with Ammu when Sophie Mol arrives in Ayemenem. After Comrade Pillai refuses to help him, the police officers beat him until he is almost dead, and Estha is forced to identify him as their abductor. Velutha dies in jail.
Indian history and politics shape the plot and meaning of The God of Small Things in a variety of ways. Some of Roy's commentary is on the surface, with jokes and snippets of wisdom about political realities in India. However, the novel also examines the historical roots of these realities and develops profound insights into the ways in which human desperation and desire emerge from the confines of a firmly entrenched caste society. Roy reveals a complex and longstanding class conflict in the state of Kerala, India, and she comments on its various competing forces.
For example, Roy's novel attacks the brutal, entrenched, and systematic oppression at work in Kerala, exemplified by figures of power such as Inspector Thomas Mathew. Roy is also highly critical of the hypocrisy and ruthlessness of the conventional, traditional moral code of Pappachi and Mammachi. On the opposite side of the political fence, the Kerala Communist Party, at least the faction represented by Comrade Pillai, is revealed to be much more concerned with personal ambition than with any notions of social justice.
In addition to her commentary on Indian history and politics, Roy evaluates the Indian postcolonial complex, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians towards their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a "[shit]-wiper" in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British, Chacko explains to the twins that they come from a family of Anglophiles, or lovers of British culture, "trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps," and he goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this.
A related inferiority complex is evident in the interactions between Untouchables and Touchables in Ayemenem. Vellya Paapen is an example of an Untouchable so grateful to the Touchable class that he is willing to kill his son when he discovers that his son has broken the most important rule of class segregation—that there be no inter-class sexual relations.In part this reflects how Untouchables have internalized class segregation. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow coloured by cultural and class tension, including the twins' relationship with Sophie Mol, Chacko's relationship with Margaret, Pappachi's relationship with his family, and Ammu's relationship with Velutha. Characters such as Baby Kochamma and Pappachi are the most rigid and vicious in their attempts to uphold that social code, while Ammu and Velutha are the most unconventional and daring in unraveling it. Roy implies that this is why they are punished so severely for their transgression.
The many types of love in Roy's novel, whether they are described as erotic, familial, incestuous, biological, or hopeless, are important to the novel's meaning. However, Roy focuses her authorial commentary on forbidden and taboo types of love, including Ammu's love for Velutha and Rahel's love for Estha. Both relationships are rigidly forbidden by what Roy calls the "Love Laws," or "The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. / And how much" (Roy 311). Although breaking these laws is the worst of taboos, and those who break them are brutally punished, desire and desperation overcome the Love Laws at the key moments of Roy's novel.
One interpretation of Roy's theme of forbidden love is that love is such a powerful and uncontrollable force that it cannot be contained by any conventional social code. Another is that conventional society somehow seeks to destroy real love, which is why love in the novel is consistently connected to loss, death, and sadness. Also, because all romantic love in the novel relates closely to politics and history, it is possible that Roy is stressing the interconnectedness of personal desire to larger themes of history and social circumstances. Love would therefore be an emotion that can be explained only in terms of two peoples' cultural backgrounds and political identities.
This book is basically about love. Although the book is tragic, it is a most beautiful love story. The beauty of Ammu and Velutha's love for each other is that it is forbidden. It is a wild and dangerous love. This is what gives it its special flavor and intensity. Arundhati Roy gives the reader a deeper understanding of all of the different dimensions of love.
Chacko's love for Margaret is forgiving and undemanding. No matter how badly Margaret has hurt him, he will always be there for her. His love is secure and comforting. Baby Kochamma finds a meaning to her life through an impossible and unrequited love for a priest. Life without love is no life at all.
The book speaks about family love. Here readers see the love between brother and sister. Rahel and Estha's love for each other is so strong and deep that they instinctively know what each other is thinking and doing. Ammu's love for her children is so deep and demanding that they all seem to belong to each other body and soul.
Other examples of love are found throughout the book. Mammachi dotes on her son, Chacko. He is her world who can do no wrong. Chacko adores his daughter Sophie, though he doesn't really know her at all. Chacko's love for his niece and nephew is simple and cheerful. Rahel and Estha feel they should love Sophie, simply because she is their cousin. Velutha's tender and unselfish love for the twins is a reflection of his love for their mother.
A very fitting quote by Roy, that sums up a large part of the effect of love laws: "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less." (Ammu to Rahel)
The story is set in the caste society of India. In this time, members of the Untouchable Paravan or Paryan were not permitted to touch members of higher castes or enter their houses. This extreme form of discrimination was deeply embedded over centuries in the Indian society starting from the time of Portuguese Colonialism during which Christianity/Roman Catholicism became a major religion in Kerala. The Second decree of Synod of Diamper organised by Portuguese Archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Menezes, allowed Untouchability to be practised by Christians of Kerala.[3] Portuguese soldiers who married Indian ladies and their offsprings were held at high esteem. The Untouchables were considered polluted beings. They had the lowliest jobs and lived in subhuman conditions. In India, the caste system was considered a way to organize society. Arundhati Roy's book shows how terribly cruel such a system can be as the oppressors were immigrants from Persia/Iraq during the rule of Venads Dravidian-Tamil king Ayyanadikal Thiruvadikal in the ninth century as mentioned in the Tharisapalli plates.
Along with the caste system, readers see an economic class struggle. The Ipes are considered upper class. They are factory owners, the dominating class. Mammachi and Baby Kochamma would not deign to mix with those of a lower class. Even Kochu Maria, who has been with them for years, will always be a servant of a lower class.
However, Roy shows other types of less evident discrimination. For example, there is religious discrimination. It is unacceptable for a Syrian Christian to marry a Hindu. In more than one passage of the book, the reader feels Rahel and Estha's discomfort at being half Hindu. Baby Kochamma constantly makes disparaging comments about the Hindus. On the other hand, there is discomfort even between the Christian religions, as is shown by Pappachi's negative reaction when Baby converts to Catholicism.
Chacko suffers more veiled racial discrimination, as it seems his daughter also did. His English wife's parents were shocked and disapproving that their daughter should marry an Indian, no matter how well educated. Sophie Mol at one point mentions to her cousins that they are all "wog," while she is "half-wog."
The Ipes are very class conscious. They have a need to maintain their status. Discrimination is a way of protecting one's privileged position in society.
Betrayal is a constant element in this story. There are big and small betrayals. Love, ideals and confidence are all betrayed, consciously and unconsciously, maliciously and innocently. It seems that everyone has suffered some type of betrayal.
Comrade Pillai betrays not only Velutha's trust and ideals but also Chacko's. Pillai does this with no qualms, to further his own and his party's interests. Another character prepared to further his own interest at any cost is Ammu's ex-husband who, in order to save his job, would have been willing to allow his boss to take Ammu as a mistress. Chacko is betrayed by his wife.
Baby Kochamma is capable of lying and betraying everyone, even innocent children, to protect her own social position. Vellya Paapen, also in fear of his own position, betrays his son by telling Mammachi about Velutha and Ammu. Little Esthappen has his innocence betrayed by a dirty old man.
Velutha, the purest of all, is the one who is most betrayed. He is even betrayed by a little seven-year-old boy who loves him dearly. Estha suffers guilt for years after, maybe because his betrayal was unintentional. The novel asks the question: up until what point can we trust others, or even ourselves? How easy is it to put our own interests and convenience over loyalty?
The God of Small Things is not written in a sequential narrative style in which events unfold chronologically. Instead, the novel is a patchwork of flashbacks and lengthy sidetracks that weave together to tell the story of the Ipe family. The main events of the novel are traced back through the complex history of their causes, and memories are revealed as they relate to each other thematically and as they might appear in Rahel's mind. Although the narrative voice is omniscient, it is loosely grounded in Rahel's perspective, and all of the episodes of the novel progress towards the key moments in Rahel's life.
This non-sequential narrative style, which determines the form of the novel, is an extremely useful authorial tool. It allows Roy a great deal of flexibility as she chooses which themes and events are most important to pursue. The author is able to structure her book so as to build up to the ideas and events at the root of the Ipe family's experience.
Throughout Roy's novel, the narrative voice emphasizes that it is building towards a mysterious, cataclysmic, and all-important event. Roy even provides details and glimpses of the event, which she refers to as "The Loss of Sophie Mol," and quotes characters remembering it and referring to it vaguely far before the reader discovers what has happened. Because of this technique, called foreshadowing, Roy builds considerable tension and intrigue into The God of Small Things, and she is able to play with the expectation and anticipation that the reader feels.
The book is narrated in the third person. However, during a great part of the narrative, the reader sees everything through Rahel's eyes. This gives the reader a very special insight into the happenings and characters. There are various moments which cross each other all through the book. One moment is in 1969 when Rahel is a seven-year-old child. At these moments everything is seen through a child's eye with a child's feelings and rationale. Facts, objects and people are seen in a complete different light. The child's view gives the book a very special charm and poignancy. It also brings in moments of light comic scenes.
Another moment is twenty-three years later of an adult woman, searching for something she has lost in her childhood. The adult's eye is more critical.
The story is set in the small town of Ayemenem in the Kerala province, southwest India. The main part of the plot takes place in 1969, a time when the caste system in India was still very strongly imbedded. It is also the time of increased awareness around the world and a peak of communist ideology and influence.
India is a very complex society with various cultural and religious habits and beliefs. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims share the same space. Society is divided not only by the very strict caste system but also by class consciousness. There are a number of languages spoken in India, but the higher classes make a point of speaking English, sending their sons to study in England and adopting certain English habits. Kerala, where the story is set itself has a complex social setup with Hindus, Muslims and Christians having lifestyle and traditions different from each other. It also has the largest number of Christian population compared to other parts of India, predominantly Saint Thomas Christians or Syrian Christians. Kottayam is a district where the Christians are a majority.
Arundhati Roy describes her book as "an inextricable mix of experience and imagination."
The book is divided into twenty-one chapters. Some chapters have subdivisions in them. Other chapters are very short. The story is not told in a linear time frame. The author takes the reader back and forth from the present to the past. Facts, thoughts and recollections are interrupted in one chapter and further expanded on a few chapters later.
At certain points, Roy follows no sentence or paragraph rules. This deviation from a formal style is used to enhance the atmosphere of the book.
In the first chapter, Roy gives readers an outline of the story. The other chapters have no chronological order. The last chapter, depicting the love scene, is actually the middle of the story itself. There is no real end to the story itself. The author lets the reader imagine what the future may hold for Rahel and Estha. Will they ever find happiness and how?
The author has structured the novel in this way in order to put more emphasis on the events that lead up to the story, the consequences and the characters themselves involved.
As this story focuses on two children and their impressions of the world, Roy uses various techniques to represent the children's viewpoint and their innocence. One technique that Roy employs is the capitalization of certain words and phrases to give them certain significance. Similarly, the children will restate things that the adults say in a new phonetic way, disjoining and recombining words. This echoes the children's way of looking at the world differently from the grown-ups that surround them. They place significance on words and ideas differently from the adults, thereby creating a new way of viewing the world around them. They pick up on certain feelings and ideas that the adults around them either fail or refuse to recognize, and give new significance to things that the adults may or may not ignore for their own purposes. The children use and repeat these phrases throughout the story so that the phrases themselves gain independence and new representational meanings in subsequent uses.
Roy also employs a disjointed, nonsequential narrative that echoes the process of memory, especially the resurfacing of a previously suppressed, painful memory.
The uncovering of the story of Sophie Mol's death existing concurrently with the forward moving story of Rahel's return to Ayemenem and reunion with Estha creates a complex narrative that reiterates the difficulty of the subject of the story and the complexity of the culture from which the story originates. Time is rendered somewhat static as the different parts of the one narrative line are intertwined through repetition and nonsequential discovery. This is also part of the way in which Roy uses real life places and people that she has shifted and altered for use within this story. All of the multifarious elements come together to construct a diverse look at one instance of Indian culture and the effect of the caste system on life and love during a time of postcolonialism. As the children attempt to form their own identities, naming and renaming themselves in the process, Roy places in parallel the effect of the process, by intertwining the past and the present.
Similarly, this process echoes the progression of the Indian people, like all other cultures that attempt to find ways to maintain their traditions within a time of increasing globalization.
Ch'ien, Evelyn. "The Politics of Design: Arundhati Roy." In Weird English. Harvard University Press, 2004.
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Last Orders |
Man Booker Prize recipient 1997 |
Succeeded by Amsterdam |