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
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.
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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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 control a state government in 1957, but Nehru broke it in 1959. In 1962, the year Rahel and Estha were born, India fought a war over a border with China. As a result "the Communist Party of India split between a pro-Russian faction, still called the CPI, and a faction that grew to be less influenced by foreign governments, called the Communist Party of India (Marxist)" In 1960 there was a future split in the communist parties, who started a communist revolution. During this time tensions between Pakistan and India resulted into a war in 1965. In 1969, the year of Sophie Mol's visit to Ayemenem, the Indian national congress had split due to tensions between liberal and conservative members of the party.
In the novel Roy uses colours to symbolize feelings. "Through the red Formica door that closed slowly that closed slowly on its own, Rahel followed Ammu and baby kochamma into HERS. She turned to wave across the slipperoily marble floor at Estha alone(with a comb), in his beige and pointy shoes. Estha waited in the dirty marble lobby with the lonely, watching mirrors till the red door took his sister away."( Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, p. 94) Through this Roy tries to convey the pain Estha feels because he feels like he is losing Rahel. It shows the beginning of the differences that separate them. He first seems to experience that he is different from her because he is a boy. Hence, because of this he experiences a brief separation from her. The passage foreshadows the use of this color to show other events that eventually leads to true emotional separation that Estha and Rahel go through later on in their lives. According to<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6366/color.html> Red candles symbolize energy, strength, sexual potency or to conquer fear. Red Auras symbolize anger, resentment, lust, and exploding temper. Roy uses red to foreshadow the bad things that were going to take place later in the story.
"They had to rush up the red steps with the old red carpet. Red staircase with red spit stains in the red corner" (p.97) Roy uses the colour red again to show that this event emotionally scars Estha and creates an eventual separation from Rahel and the world due to the incident with the Orange drink, Lemon drink Man. Red is also a symbol of evil and hell, hence Roy is trying to portray that this incident for Estha was as though he was living in hell after he realized the cruelty of what had happened.
Another colour that Roy uses to symbolize feelings is yellow.
"His yellow teeth were magnets. They saw, they smiled, they sang, they smelled, they moved. They mesmerized"(p.98)
"Estha went. Drawn by the yellow teeth" (p.98)
According to <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6366/color.html> yellow candles symbolize imagination, power of the mind, action, attraction, and concentration. Yellow auras symbolize the workings of the mind, sudden changes which are not to your liking, lost interest in learning anything new. This shows that by using the colour yellow Roy tries to convey that sudden changes are going to take place and the "yellow teeth" wasn't leading him into to anything good.
Water is a symbol of purity, and Roy describes water in this novel as something to wash all your troubles away. "He longed for the river. Because water always helps" (p.108) water always seems to comfort Estha, and Rahel is described as "A fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo" (p.105) Roy puts forward the idea that Estha finds comfort in Rahel and this could also foreshadow that in the end he will get over his fear and withdrawal from the world and find comfort in Rahel.
A main theme in the novel is the "love laws". There are many types of love in this novel such as erotic, family, or hopeless but Roy mainly focuses on the forbidden love, which is Ammu's love for Velutha, these are two characters who go against the cast system; this is an affair between a Touchable and an Untouchable and Rahel's love for Estha, who are twins. Both relationships are forbidden by what Roy puts forward as "The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how, and how much." Those who break the law are punished. Roy conveys forbidden love is that love is such a powerful and uncontrollable force that it cannot be controlled by anyone or any cultural rule. The caste system classify many of the cultural rules. Touchables are not meant to touch the Untouchables. These rules cause conflict when individuals cannot stick to the caste system that is enforces upon them, and those who cannot abide by the "love laws". These tragedies are foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel: "They all broke the rules. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much." (p.31)
I believe that power and strength are very important aspects in the novel. Ammu and Velutha are aware of the cast system and the consequences of the forbidden relationship. But, yet they seem powerless to stop their feelings for one another. "Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they knew already that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken." (p. 335) This scene in the novel is the very poetic because they both know that they are going against cast system and their love that is between a touchable and an untouchable could destroy them. This scene is also a foreshadowing of the events that take place later in the novel such as Velutha's brutal death and her death. Ammu breaks the "love laws" by being disloyal and by having a love affaire with an untouchable. Velutha breaks the "Love Laws" by moving out of his place in the society.
Estha and Rahel are twins, when Estha leaves Ayemenem with Ammu and then Chacko there is connection and a part of them that is lost. Hence, when the twins meet again when they're 31, they find comfort in each other and Rahel longed to find her identity and connection with Estha hence, they have sex. Here, the "love law" is broken since Estha and Rahel are brother and sister. In this case, Estha and Rahel didn't suffer the consequences of death but instead they destroyed their relationship. Rahel was powerless because she longed to find her identity.
Through this novel Roy portrays that the Indian society as people who always seems to devastate real love. Hence, she combines love with death and sadness. All romantic love in the novel relates closely to politics and history. Roy shows a comparison between desire, history, caste, and social circumstances. And hence, she shows that the Indian society's mind set is that love can only be pure and divine only depending on the cultural backgrounds and political identities.
Bibliography
* Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Penguin Books India PVT, Limited, 1997.
* "Color Symbolism." Geocities. 22 Feb. 2009 <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6366/color.html>.
* "History of Kerala -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 15 Feb. 2009. 22 Feb. 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kerala>.
* "History of India -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 22 Feb. 2009. 22 Feb. 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India>.
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