The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - In
this post you will get all the information about ‘The God of Small Things’. The
proper and easy explanation of the novel is written below, i hope will read the
summary and know everything about 'The God of Small Things’.
Introduction
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - The
God of Small Things is a family drama novel written by Indian writer Arundhati Roy. Roy's debut novel, it is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love
Laws" prevalent in 1960s Kerala, India. The novel explores how small,
seemingly insignificant things shape people's behavior and their lives. The
novel also explores the lingering effects of casteism in
India. It won the Booker Prize in 1997.
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - The
God of Small Things was Roy's first book and only novel until the 2017
publication of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness twenty years later. She began writing the
manuscript for The God of Small Things in 1992 and finished four
years later, in 1996. It was published the following year. The potential of the
story was first recognized by Pankaj Mishra, an editor with HarperCollins, who sent it to three British publishers. Roy received
£500,000 in advance and rights to the book were sold in 21 countries.
Characters
·
Estha
·
Rahel
·
Ammu
·
Velutha
·
Chacko
·
Baby Kochamma
About the Author
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - Suzanna
Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian author best known
for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for
Fiction in 1997 and became the
best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved
in human rights and environmental causes.
Arundhati Roy was
born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to Mary Roy, a Malayali Jacobite Syrian Christian women's rights activist from Kerala and Rajib Roy, a Bengali Hindu tea plantation manager
from Calcutta. When she was two, her parents divorced and she
returned to Kerala with her mother and brother. For some time, the family
lived with Roy's maternal grandfather in Ooty, Tamil Nadu. When she was five, the family moved back to Kerala,
where her mother started a school.
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - Roy
attended school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at
the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, where she met architect Gerard da Cunha. They married in 1978 and lived together in Delhi, and then Goa, before they separated and divorced in 1982.
Summary
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - The
story is set in Aymanam, part of Kottayam
district in Kerala, India. The
novel has a disjointed narrative;
the temporal setting shifts back and forth between 1969, when fraternal twins Rahel, a girl, and Esthappen, a boy, are seven
years old, and 1993, when the twins are reunited.
Ammu Ipe is desperate
to escape her ill-tempered father, known as Pappachi, and her bitter,
long-suffering mother, known as Mammachi. She leaves Ayemenem, and to avoid returning, she
marries a man only known by the name of Baba in Calcutta. She later discovers that he is an alcoholic, and he
physically abuses her and tries to pimp her to his boss. Ammu gives birth to Estha and
Rahel, leaves her husband, and returns to Ayemenem to live with her parents and
brother, Chacko. Chacko has returned to India from England following his divorce from an English woman,
Margaret, and the subsequent death of Pappachi.
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - The
multi-generational, Syrian Christian family
home in Ayemenem also includes Pappachi's sister, Navomi Ipe, known as Baby Kochamma. As a
young girl, Baby Kochamma fell in love with Father Mulligan, a young Irish
priest who had come to Ayemenem. To get closer to him, Baby Kochamma converted
to Roman Catholicism and
joined a convent against her father's wishes. After a few months in the
convent, she realized that her vows brought her no closer to the man she loved.
Her father eventually rescued her from the convent and sent her to America for education. Because of her unrequited love for Father Mulligan, Baby Kochamma remained unmarried for the rest of
her life, becoming deeply bitter over time. Throughout the book, she delights
in the misfortune of others and constantly manipulates events to bring
calamity.
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - The death of Margaret's second husband
Joe in a car accident prompts Chacko to
invite her and their daughter, Sophie, to spend Christmas in Ayemenem. On the road to the airport to pick up
Margaret and Sophie, the family visits a theater, and on the way, they
encounter a group of Communist protesters who
surround the car and humiliate Baby Kochamma. Rahel thinks she sees amongst the
protesters Velutha, a servant who works for the family's pickle factory,
Paradise Pickles and Preserve, and does extra chores for Mammachi. Later at the
theater, Estha is sexually
molested by the "Orangedrink Lemondrink Man", a vendor working at the
snack counter. Estha's traumatic experience factors into the tragic
events at the heart of the narrative.
Rahel's assertion
that she saw Velutha in the Communist mob, causes Baby Kochamma to associate Velutha
with her humiliation at the protesters' hands, and she begins to harbor enmity
toward him. Rahel and Estha form an unlikely bond with Velutha and come to love
him. Ammu soon gets attracted to Velutha mainly because of her children's love
towards him, and eventually, they begin a short-lived romantic affair. Velutha is a Dalit, the lowest caste, meaning
his romance with Ammu is forbidden, and culminates in tragedy for the family.
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - When
her relationship with Velutha gets exposed by Velutha's father, Vellya Paapen,
Ammu is locked in her room and Velutha is banished. In a fit of rage, Ammu
blames the twins for her misfortune and calls them "millstones around her
neck." Distraught, Estha and Rahel decide to escape. Their cousin, Sophie
also joins them. During the night, as they try to reach the History House, an abandoned
house across the river, their boat capsizes and Sophie drowns. When Margaret
and Chacko return from a trip where they had gone to arrange Margaret's and
Sophie's return trips, they see Sophie's corpse laid out on the sofa.
Baby Kochamma goes to
the police and accuses Velutha
of being responsible for Sophie's death. A group of policemen hunt
Velutha down, savagely beat him for crossing caste lines, and arrest him on the
brink of death.
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy -The
twins, huddling in the abandoned house, witness the horrific scene. Later, when
they reveal the truth to the chief of police Thomas Mathew, he is alarmed. Not
unknown to the fact that Velutha is a Communist, he is afraid that if word gets
out that the arrest and beating were wrongful, it will cause unrest among the
local Communists led by Comrade K.N.M Pillai. Mathew threatens to hold Baby
Kochamma responsible for falsely accusing Velutha. To save herself, Baby Kochamma tricks Estha and
Rahel into believing that the two of them would be implicated as having
murdered Sophie out of jealousy and would surely be incarcerated with Ammu. She thus convinces them to lie to the
inspector that Velutha had abducted them and had murdered Sophie. Velutha dies
of his injuries overnight.
After Sophie's
funeral, Ammu goes to the police to tell the truth about her relationship with
Velutha. Afraid of being exposed, Baby Kochamma convinces Chacko that Ammu and
the twins were responsible for his daughter's death. Chacko kicks Ammu out of
the house and forces her to send Estha to live with his father. Estha never
sees Ammu again. Ammu dies alone in a motel a few years later at the age of 31.
The God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy - After
a turbulent childhood and adolescence in India, Rahel gets married and goes to
America. There, she divorces before returning to Ayemenem after years of
working dead-end jobs. Estha and Rahel, now 31, are reunited for the first time
since they were children. They had been haunted by their guilt and their
grief-ridden pasts. Toward the end of the novel, Estha and Rahel engage in incestuous sex,
and it's said that "what they shared that night was not happiness, but
hideous grief." The novel comes to an end with a nostalgic recounting of
Ammu and Velutha's love affair.
Reference
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