The God of Small Things is Arundhati Roy's first novel, winner of the Booker Prize in 1997. It is a poetic love story that takes place in the communist state of Kerala, India

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Grade: IB1

Submitted date: 24/ February/2009

Word Count: 1,675

The God of Small Things is Arundhati Roy's first novel, winner of the Booker Prize in 1997. It is a poetic love story that takes place in the communist state of Kerala, India and told through the eyes of "two egg twins," Esthappen and Rahel. Their recently divorced mother, Ammu, takes her children home to the village of Ayemenem in Kerala where she is not welcomed warmly by her family. Estha and Rahel learn fast that "things can change in a day" and that "anything can happen to anyone." The novel tells the story of the Kochamma family, a wealthy Christian family in a small village in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Based from the point of view of Rahel Kochamma, who has returned to her hometown to see her twin brother, it puts forward the story of the dramatic events of Rahel's childhood that drastically changed the lives of everyone in the family. The God of Small Things portrays themes that ranges from religion to biology. Roy stresses throughout the novel that great and small themes are interconnected, and that historical events and unrelated details have consequences throughout a community and country. The novel is therefore able to show varies themes, and many of ideas relating to the personal and family history of the members of the Kochamma family as well as the concerns of the Kerala region of India. Some of the novel's themes are forbidden love, Indian history, and politics.

The two main styles of writing shown in The God of Small Things are foreshadowing and the not sequential narrative style in which events unfold chronologically. The main events of the novel are drawn back through the history of their causes, and memories are told as they relate to each other and as they appear in Rahel's mind. Although the protagonist's voice is as though she knows it all, it is viewed in Rahel's perspective, and all of the events in the novel moves towards the most important moments in Rahel's life. Throughout the novel, the protagonist emphasizes that it is building towards an important event. Roy even provides glimpses of the event, which she refers to as "The Loss of Sophie Mol," and she put forwards characters remembering it and referring to it vaguely even before the reader discovers what has happened. This foreshadowing helps Roy to be able to play with the expectations and feelings of the reader.
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India became independent on August 15, 1947 at the stroke of midnight, after more than three hundred years of a British colonial rule. The British partitioned the colony into the nations of India and Pakistan forming East and West regions, but this was unsuccessful in suppressing disturbance between Hindus and Muslims. Ammu was five years old in 1947, living with her family in the Indian capital of New Delhi. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India from Independence until his death in 1964, struggled to encourage economic growth. In Kerala, the Communist Party of India was elected to ...

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