Commentary on The God of Small Things (P45-46)

Authors Avatar by rockybalboa (student)

This Commentary will attempt to analyse the underlysing attitudes, assumptions and values of the characters, especially Baby Kochamma in the passage of the novel ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy.

The passage starts of with the imagery of Baby Kochamma sandwiched “between Estha and Rahel”, “on the back seat of the Plymouth” as if she is hiding from the truth and using the twins as a barrier. The truth of her actions, her character and her ideology about the twins.  The preposition “between” to describe her position represents her fear of being caught for her actions explored later on in the story. This is a foreshadowing of an all-important event within which Baby Kochamma plays a vital sinful and murderous role - murder not only of humans, but the theme of love.  A dysfunctional family is portrayed through how she, the aunt of the twins, finds her niece and nephew a burden and a “waif”. When Baby Kochamma sits in the back a hierarchy is presented in that more important people sit in the front and the trivial are uncomfortably placed at the back.

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The minor sentence “Ex-nun, and incumbent baby grand aunt” is used to give more information for character development and realization of Baby Kochamma’s proudness.

The pre-modifier “worse” helps to give a listing effect - a listing of all the uncontrollable negatives the helpless twins had in them, in this case, being half-hindu hybrids. This shows the racism within the Indian society. The alliteration of the ‘h’ sound accentuates their characteristics. Racism and prejudice is the main reason Margaret Kochamma, a British national is seated in the front of the car. The fact that the words are capitalized gives the effect ...

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