Great Expectations

667 Words2 Pages

The key techniques Roy evidently deploys in her opening of ‘God of Small Things’ is intrinsic throughout the postcolonial novel. It is written in past tense, and the novel is non-linear allowing events to appear in different sequence. The author uses metaphors and similes to create a vibrant and lively setting that enriches the novel with a greater sense of place. Moreover she uses very short sentences such as “Red bananas ripen”(1) to change the pace, keeping the reader engaged whilst inserting an active voice into the text. Lastly it is written in third person which differs from Dickens ‘Great Expectations’ where Pip is the key narrator, allowed to express his feelings very overtly. Challenges inherit with attempting to re-write the opening of ‘Great Expectations’ in the style of ‘God of Small Things’ varied greatly. It was difficult trying to conceal Pip’s character much like Roy did with her characters in the opening because in ‘Great Expectations’ there is an immediate personal voice that divulges into his thoughts almost immediately. So to minimalise that in this opening certainty created a different angle by which Pip could be observed.

In the first line I’ve said that the marsh country is sodden ground rather than was to infer that the character is currently in spring season; this effect can be seen in Roy’s work when the character is placed in “May”. Roy deploys personification, metaphors and similes very prominently in her opening so I have tried to create the same feel. For example I personify the wind to “hide” and the sky to be “nervous” to foreshadow the feelings that Pip, the protagonist will feel later on, an evident technique in Roy’s work. A stylistic choice I mimicked was the line break, starting with “The aft...

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... eventually to a close up; a strong novelist technique. This differs from Great Expectations where Pip’s character becomes very clear straight from the beginning as he vocalizes his thought process and exposes himself to the reader. One must take into account the difference between both writers with Roy’s more modern technique written in 1997 compared to Dickens ‘Great Expectations’ that was written in serial in a weekly magazine of All Year Round in the 18th century. This immediately sets up a challenge purely due to contextual differences. Roy uses a non-linear multi dimensional novel, which contrasts greatly from Dickens classic bildungsroman: differing stylistics choices, which often contradict each other. Both, however, are similar in the sense that they both criticize real life social structures from a fictional point despite their evident variances in style.

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