Introduction
Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist, activist and a world citizen. She became famous when her first novel The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize in 1997. Arundhati Roy has brought the issue of untouchability before the world through “The God of Small Things”. In this novel Arundhati has depicted the conflict that is not taking place between Touchable Hindus and untouchables, but it’s between Syrian Christians and untouchables. It shows that untouchables are not only facing suffering, torture and harassment from Hindus but also from other religious communities in this democratic India. The novel exposes the gap between the touchables and the untouchables; the exploiters and the
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Roy employs her portrayal of the downtrodden through the hardships that Velutha encounter as the novel progresses. The entire incidents in The God of Small Things take place in the southern Indian state of Kerala and revolve around a forbidden relationship between a Syrian Christian divorcee and mother of two children, Ammu and a low caste carpenter, Velutha. There are many other instances of social exclusion in The God of Small Things. The character who has to face problems due to thi evil of untouchability prevailing in the society is the untouchable paravan, Velutha who is a gifted young man who thoughtlessly enters into a love affair with a Syrian Christian divorcee and mother of two children called Ammu. He is a higly talented carpenter yet what h e gets in life is the social exclusion. When the love affair comes to light he is falsely charged. He fails to understand why his father Vellya Paapen scolds him for his love-affair with Ammu who is a high status woman. He is against this social discrimination but his this love-affair is approved by the society and proves to be deadly for him. On hearing about this love-affair, Babby Kochamma conspires with the Inspector and Velutha is put behind the prison by Inspector Matthew, where he is severely beaten to
Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namesake illustrates the assimilation of Gogol as a second generation American immigrant, where Gogol faces the assimilation of becoming an American. Throughout the novel, Gogol has been struggling with his name. From kindergarten to college, Gogol has questioned the reason why he was called Nikhil when he was a child, to the reason why he was called Gogol when he was in college. Having a Russian name, Gogol often encounters questions from people around him, asking the reason of his name. Gogol was not given an Indian name from his Indian family or an American name from the fact that he was born in America, to emphasize that how hard an individual try to assimilate into a different culture, he is still bonded to his roots as the person he ethnically is.
Water- The river, in The God of Small Things, plays an important role in the story. It physically represents a boundary, the children must cross it to escape. Velutha also crossed the river- he was alone, he was “The God of Small Things” (Roy, 274). Sophie Mol had drowned in the river; she got swept away with the current and out of the twins’ lives, “...Sophie Mol became a Memory...”
Roy begins by speaking in the present time focusing on Rahel return to India after a long absence. The author includes a careful description of the desolateness that currently envelopes the once active house, a house filled with activity but little happiness. After Ammu, the twin’s mother, is divorced, she returns to the house and fills it with her young and active twins. Rahel and Estha lived guarded lives as children, finding happiness for the most part only in their relationship with a neighbor of a lesser class, Velutha, a carpenter who became involved romantically with Ammu. Eventually, Estha was separated from his twin and sent to live with his father. In years past, her grandmother, Mammachi, spent unnamed hours on the front veranda, fleeing from her brutal husband, the Reverend Ipe and playing her violin. When Sophie Mol, Chacko’s daughter arrives from England for a visit, she is received on the veranda and served cake. And the property near the house also once held a factory of Mammachi’s named “Paradise Pickles and Preserves” and employed several people. The house held a bustle of activity.
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children employs strategies which engage in an exploration of History, Nationalism and Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts.
Response to A God Of Small Things One of the main themes in Arundhati Roy's A God Of Small Things is discrimination in the caste system. Roy tells the story of the hardships faced by the Untouchables, the lowest caste in the caste system. Technically, the Untouchables are not even in the caste system because to put them in the same system as the other four castes would be offensive to the rest of them. Another theme in this novel is forbidden love. These two themes, discrimination in the caste system and forbidden love, come together when Mammachi sneaks across the river "to love by night the man her children love by day", to meet Velutha.
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a story of a family stricken with taboos and scandal. The novel is a series of events told in third person often out of chronological order. The God of Small Things is not merely just a series of events or a story solely about Esta and Rachel’s relationship. Rather it is a focus on the taboo love oppressed by the class system in India. All of the culturally taboo relationships play a key role in Roy’s social commentary; Ammu and Velutha, and Estha and Rahel, and even Baby Kochamma and Father Mulligan. With focus on these relationships, Roy can comment on the sexual oppression in India due to the class system.
that lay down ‘who should be loved, and how and how much’ when she has
The paper throws light on the major features of language that Arundhati Roy has deployed in her novel The God of Small Thing, the novel that won her The Man Booker Prize. Roy, through her creativity of language, makes an attempt to capture and represent the reality. The novelist comes up with certain strategies. She brings about certain linguistic innovations, by shaping and molding the language as it is not readily available, to capture Indian sensibility and present it in all its cultural dimensions.
There is no question that Mulk Raj Anand has fashioned with Untouchable a novel that articulates the abuses of an exploited class through sheer sympathy in the traditionalist manner of the realist novel He is, indeed, the "fiery voice" of those people who form the Untouchable caste. Yet if the goal of the writer, as Anand himself states, is to transform "words into prophecy," then the reader's struggle for meaning in the closing scenes of the novel become problematic and contestatory. It is reasonable to assume -- and as I would argue, it is implied -- that Anand has ventured to address a specific question with writing Untouchable; this is, how to alleviate the exploitation of the untouchable class in India? He then proceeds to address this question through the dramatization of Bahka, the novel's central character. Having said this -- and taking into account Anand's notion of the novel as prophesy -- I will argue that the author has failed to fully answer the question he has set before him.
The significance of betrayal in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is prevalent throughout the novel. This pertains to the betrayal of the children, Estha and Rahel, by the adult world. This is depicted by how the decisions of the adults in the novel ultimately betray and rob the twins’ chance at childhood innocence. Baby Kochamma, the twins’ great aunt, accuses Velutha of raping Ammua and then pressures Estha to confirm it. This betrayal of Velutha by Estha is depicted in the above passage and is significant as this profound guilt he obtains eventually leads to his mutism. The Orangedrink Lemondrink man molests Estha in a lobby. A series of childhood betrayals results in the twins traumatized childhood and adulthood.
When novel was written rigid caste system and religion was penetrated in the society but it is vanishing with the changing world. The community represented in “The God of Small Things” is Syrian Christian. The Christians of Kerala are divided into five churches: Roman Catholic, Orthodox Syrian, Nestorian,
Arundhati Roy, the acclaimed post colonial novelist and activist, won the Man Booker Prizes for her first novel The God of Small Things in 1997. She is deeply involved with India’s social problems, particularly those concerning the socially marginalized and dispossesed people, ie., dalits women etc. She has also written about injustices in her works of nonfiction. According to Roy, “there is an intricate web of morality, rigor, and responsibility that art, that writing itself, imposes on a writer”.1 In these lines from Power Politics, Roy avidly defends the writers freedom of expression and his /her obligation to point out issues of social injustice. The God of Small Things is about several things but one of the chief issues it brings into
The country of India is not only the second most densely populated country in the world with the world’s ninth largest economy along with some of the strangest taboos and customs. India contains over 1.2 billion people, various religions like Muslim, Hinduism, along with different gesture and greeting taboos, the Kashmir conflict and the fierce competition to fight for the Kashmir Valley and how taboos of India compare to the likes of other counties taboos. India is a very unique country that is like no other on Earth.
This essay focuses on the theme of forbidden love, The God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy. This novel explores love and how love can’t be ignored when confronted with social boundaries. The novel examines how conventional society seeks to destroy true love as this novel is constantly connected to loss, death and sadness. This essay will explore the theme of forbidden love, by discussing and analysing Ammu and Velutha's love that is forbidden because of the ‘Love Laws’ in relation to the caste system which results in Velutha’s death. It is evident that forbidden love negatively impacts and influences other characters, such as Estha and Rahel, which results in Estha and Rahel’s incestuous encounter.
Violence against women is a worldwide phenomenon which spans all social classes and age groups. Violence in both its subtle and blatant from is so deeply embedded in cultures around the world that it is almost rendered invisible. To quote Charlotte Bunch – “Opening the door on the subject of violence against the world’s females is like standing at the threshold of an immense dark chamber vibrating with collective anguish, but with the sounds with protest throttled back to a murmur. Where there should be outrage aimed at an intolerable status quo there is instead denial, and the largely passive acceptance of the way things are”. (Bunch) In this limelight, this study intends to focus on the consumption of violence and the associated fear, deliberately and subtly illustrated by the elements of silence and darkness in Manjula Padmanabhan’s play Lights Out. Violence in India is multifaceted: not merely physical, it is more often mental and emotional, subtle and indirect, most often insidious and difficult to recognize. Lights Out is based on a true incident, an eye-witness account. The incident took place in Santa Cruz, Bombay, 1982, wherein just like the play, a group of urban middle-class people chose to stand and watch ...