THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS English Literature Semester-IV THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS BY ARUNDHATI ROY Dr. Monika Bhatnagar Dept. Of English 1 Page THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS BIOGRAPHY Arundhati Roy was born in 1961 in the Northeastern Indian region of Bengal, to a Christian mother and Hindu father. She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, which serves as the setting for her first novel, The God of Small Things (under the name "Ayemenem"). Roy's mother, Mary Roy, homeschooled her until the age of ten, when she began attending regular classes. She has been reluctant to discuss her father publicly, having spent very little time with him during her lifetime; Roy instead focuses on her mother's influence in her life. Mary Roy, a political activist, won an unprecedented victory for women's rights in Kerala. Through her persistence, the Supreme Court granted Christian women in Kerala the right to have an inheritance. She spent her teenage years at boarding school in Southern India, after which she earned her degree from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi. After graduating, Roy supported herself by teaching aerobics while honing her writing skills. She eventually wrote several film scripts, which are recognized for their complex structure and biting social commentary. Roy wrote and starred in the film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, and she wrote the script for Electric Moon, directed by her second husband, Pradip Krishen. (Her first husband was Gerard Da Cunha, whom she met while in college. Their marriage lasted approximately four years.) Both films garnered a cult following, setting the stage for the fiction-writing side of Roy's career. Penguin published the script for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones as a book in 2004. Even when she was a low-profile writer, Roy began to assert her political opinions loudly. She rallied media support for Phoolan Devi, a politician and former criminal of Robin-Hood fame, whom she felt was being misrepresented by the film Bandit Queen (directed by Shekhar Kapur). After the controversy surrounding Bandit Queen subsided, Roy took time to write her first and only novel to 2 Page THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS date, The God of Small Things. She received an extraordinary advance of half a million pounds on the book, making its release high-profile well ahead of time. After the novel's publication in 1997, the book won the prestigious Booker Prize, making Roy its first Indian woman and non-expatriate Indian recipient. In addition to her novelistic skills, Roy is widely known for political activism (perhaps along the lines of a Noam Chomsky). She has published many works of nonfiction including several essays as well as The End of Imagination (1998), The Greater Common Good (1999), The Cost of Living (1999), Power Politics (2002), War Talk (2003), The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (2004, with David Barsamian), and An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2004). She also took part in the June 2005 World Tribunal on Iraq. In January 2006 she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her collection of essays, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it. Roy has faced accusations of being anti-American and was convicted of contempt of court by the New Delhi Supreme Court for her political activism. She remains relentless. For instance, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004 for her efforts toward social justice and peaceful conflict resolution. Roy continues to write, engage in advocacy, and live with her husband in New Delhi. 3 Page THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS SUMMARY The God of Small Things is Arundhati Roy’s first and only fiction novel. The critically acclaimed piece of dramatic literature was published in 1996. Set in Ayemenem (which is now a district in part of Kerala, India), the story spans two dozen years, jumping back and forth, through flashbacks and flash forwards, from 1969 when fraternal twins Rahel and Estha were 7 years old, and then to 1993, when they reunite at age 31. The story opens with their family background, telling of how Pappachi, their grandfather lost his chance to become a famous entomologist, and throughout his life takes it out on Mammachi, their grandmother by beating her constantly. They have two kids – a daughter, Ammu and a son, Chacko. Chacko, a scholar, studies in England and marries an English woman named Margaret, and they have a child together named Sophie. Their marriage falls apart when Margaret falls for another man. They divorce, and then Chacko returns home. Ammu on the other hand, wanting to be more adventurous, goes off to live with a relative away from Ayemenem, where she meets a man named Baba and marries him. They have twins: a boy, Esthappen, and a girl, Rahel. Baba is abusive and incompetent. He loses his job, and his only chance of getting it back is to let his boss have sex with his wife. Before that can happen, Ammu takes the kids and back home to Ayemenem. When the twins are seven years old, the main story begins. Chacko invites his ex-wife to visit Ayemenem after the man she fell in love with dies, and Margaret brings Sophie with her. So Chacko, Ammu, and Ammu’s kids, Rahel and Estha, all go to pick them up from the airport, however on the way they are stopped by a communist rally. Rahel sees Velutha waving a red flag – Velutha is a dear friend and an untouchable maintenance worker from her family’s pickle factory. After they pass, the group decides to go to the theater to see Rahel and Estha’s favorite film, The Sound of Music. Throughout the film, Estha can’t help but sing along with the songs in the movie. He is told to go stand in the back so as to not bother anyone else, and he ends up getting 4 Page THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS molested by the movie theater’s snack vendor. Later the next day, after they pick up Margaret and Sophie, Rahel feels jealous of the attention Sophie is getting, and goes to her friend Velutha to talk about it, telling him she saw him at the march, but he makes up a lie, not wanting his employers to know that he is a communist. Ammu sees her daughter and Velutha talking together, and it seems to make her jealous. Meanwhile, Estha is still traumatized after the incident with the snack vendor, and thinks of a way to escape his current life, believing that the vendor will come for him once more. He tells his sister his plan to leave, and they find a boat to fix up and get ready. As this is happening, it is discovered that Ammu and Velutha are having an affair, which is forbidden, especially because of Velutha’s low class. The family hears of this, and locks Ammu in her room. The kids find this a perfect time to escape, and Sophie begs to go with them. A log collides with the boat and Sophie drowns and dies. Rahel and Estha swim to shore and hide in a large place called “History House.” When Sophie’s body turns up, the family takes this as a sign to keep Velutha away from Ammu by blaming everything on him. They tell the police that Velutha raped Ammu and stole the kids. The police beat Velutha and he later dies. But it doesn’t solve anything as the entire family is torn apart by Ammu’s dishonor and Sophie’s tragic death. After Sophie’s funeral, Estha moves to live with his father, Baba. Rahel stays with Mammachi and is sent to school, and Ammu runs off to live on her own. Years later Rahel reunites with her mother when she discovers that Ammu has a lung disease that eventually kills her. Rahel finishes her studies and moves to America and lives a normal life as an architect, married to a white man that she doesn’t really love. At age 31, Rahel finally hears that her brother, Estha, had returned to Ayemenem, and so she heads back to meet with him. Upon her return she discovers that her brother had become a mute, since he had left to live with his father. He speaks to no one, and takes long solemn walks alone with no end in sight. However, Rahel is determined to bring her brother back to her, and she spends a lot of time with him as they go 5 Page THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS through their old stuff, reminiscing together. This leads to them having sex, and for the first time in decades, being with someone they love, even if that person is not someone they should be in love with. Arundhati Roy does wonders with the style of non-sequential narrative, and tells dozens of stories, with multiple characters in such a scattered way, symbolizing the disheveled lives of the characters themselves. Rahel and Estha, the fraternal twins, represent and illustrate most of the themes in the novel, including forbidden love, discrimination and familial and social tensions in such a large family with a lot to lose. And in doing so, this popular piece has inspired some other stories in Indian literature, and has even won some awards – and rightly so, as it is a sad yet lovely look Indian politics and the caste system, as well as more universal themes like betrayal, family and love – things we can all relate to. 6 Page THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS CHARACTERS Rahel Estha's female fraternal twin.