http://colinresponse.files.wordpress...008/04/roy.jpg
In November, we will be reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
Please post your comments and questions in this thread.
http://colinresponse.files.wordpress...008/04/roy.jpg
In November, we will be reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
Please post your comments and questions in this thread.
Great! I'll pick this up in work during the week!
Oh it won. I'll have to pick this up.
This is my second attempt at this book. First time I could not pass page 20 but this time I am enjoying it more. Despite the confusing start, things seem to come together (at times too) slowly.
Roy's language is interesting; she writes beautifully but in a way that I would enjoy in short passages but not necessarily in long books. However, some of the expressions she uses are beautiful: "Estha carried [vegetables and shopping] home in the crowded tram. A quiet bubble floating on a sea of noise." Thought this was a beautiful description.
What do you guys think of this passage and gods described?
(p.19)Quote:
[Rahel's husband Larry] was exadperated because he didn't know what that meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despaircould never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cosy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own incensequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.
So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people's eyes and became an exasperating expression.
now that sounds interesting!
I havent picked my copy up yet. We where out of stock in work and i'll be damned if i go buy it somewhere else, esp seeing as i get a 30% in work!!
I also just have to finish the Crystal cave by Mary Stewart first.
Scheherazade, I feel the same way about her writing so far. Roy writes beautifully, there are some passages that really snag my attention and which I end up rereading just because they sound and flow so deliciously. However, often I too get the feeling while reading that things come together very slowly. It's like a river that seems so still but you know for a fact it's moving even if you can't really see the movement.
I'm a little close to finishing the first 100 pages, and though this isn't a book I would normally read I have to say it does keep on getting a bit more interesting each time I read it.
There's a part I like:
- p.17Quote:
Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skill, hovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.
I liked the way she described the expanding of Estha's silence and how in the process the reason for his silence get buried so that just the silence exists.
Roy is also making a great job of holding back the details till the very last moment and whetting the reader's appetite for more. Whenever I think we are finally going to find out something, Roy redirects the storyline with extraordinary skill and craft.
I am almost half way through the book but the mystery keeps becoming more and more delicious - even though I know that it is a grotesque one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RaatKiRanii
One of the reasons why I like this book is because of these nuggets of delicious descriptions and phrasings that Roy has so brilliantly produced.
The imagery of the monsoon rain, the humidity, the growth of molds on the walls, and the decaying house reminds me a lot of The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.
In your opinion, what is "the god of small things"? What does it signify?
Oh I just bought the book at lunch time today. I'll try to start it tonight. :D Looks intersting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
In the country where I come from "Worse Things" also keep happening. While trying to get a notion of what the passage on page 19 meant (which particularly struck me also) I was reminded of this woman I know from back home. She is poor and passive; she has never been able to keep a job. Her daughter supports her financially (if and when the latter has work). Most of this woman's teeth are missing; she can't afford to go to the dentist. But all that seems paltry stuff; she appears to accept her lot. She considers her troubles to be small. Worse things could happen, worse things could attain "primacy" - she could get cancer, her husband (who is also jobless) could die, her daughter could die, the country could fall into anarchy and bankruptcy, etc. Now that would be big. So she might was well accept the small, "contained, and limited" discomfort decreed upon her by the god of small things. Nevertheless, whenever I see her I could not help detecting (beneath her seemingly forebearing compliance) that expression bordering "somewhere between indifference and despair" so aptly described on page 19.
Got my copy and will start shortly... looks interesting!
I started reading last night. I must say it doesn't completely click. I can understand why you gave up once on this. But it does seem intersting. She does write pretty, perhaps a too flowery for my tastes, but that's just me. I've only read the first fifteen pages. When a writer uses elaborate metaphors in every paragraph ("a sea of noise," "It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms," "He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him") they lose their impact and begin to grate. When everything is a metaphor there is a lack of precision. But we shall see. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Finally got my copy! Will start later in the week.
At this point, I'm not quite sure what "the god of small things" is, but if i had to guess then I'd say that perhaps it is all the small things in life that adds up to the big picture of our life, the major events that shape us as people. So maybe, in the case of Rahel and Estha the god of small things is the what symbolizes all the little things and events that happen before and leading to the dead of their cousin, Sophie Mol.Quote:
In your opinion, what is "the god of small things"? What does it signify
Virgil> I hear ya re. too flowery writing styles!
I have also been thinking about the small/big gods... In the face of big troubles humanity faces, our own daily troubles and worries about our own existence seem trivial. Rahel and Estha's problems might feel not important enough to bother the big god with so the small god might deal with them? Also somewhat ironic.
Not a fully baked theory yet; something I have been thinking about.
How about the repeated references to different shaped holes in the universe?
Finished!
Have just completed about fourty pages yet. In the very start, I had little idea about what was going on but slowly it started to make more sense. Have especially enjoyed the characters of Estha and Rahel. As for the 'flowery description' (as Virgil mentions), I quite agree that it is there but am not sure if it's there in an unpleasant way. In fact in some places there are some very interesting comparisons (wish I could remember them exactly though).
As for the title, don't think have any idea about the 'small Gods' part as soon as yet...hope it will make more sense later.
I liked this book too, but found it rather gimmicky. Obviously she put a lot of work into crafting imagery and resonances, as well as symbolism (I think the novel took her two years to write). As a result, she's very "studyable", but "spontaneous genius" is lacking, ha ha! I wonder whether that's why she hasn't written anything else since then... and whether that's not why you found her descriptions too flowery.
She was also influenced quite a lot by Salman Rushdie, and it might be interesting to compare their styles, ideas etc.
Ok, I’ve finished the first chapter, which is not much, but let me see if I can throw my comments in here. The flow of the narrative seems choppy. The shifts are so frequent that sometimes it seems she doesn’t fully develop one scene before she’s onto another. Characters get introduced before we can even grasp the previous one. This may not be a negative, but it does make for a confused atmosphere. Perhaps that’s what she is after.
As to what Big God and Small God mean, I certainly don’t know yet, but perhaps this passage from the first chapter (page 20 in my edition. Do we all have the same pagination?) will be significant later on.
And it goes on, I won’t copy the entire thing out. But I have no idea what any of that means. I can only hope it becomes clear at some point, or I think the novel fails.Quote:
He [McCaslin, Rahel’s American husband] didn’t know that in some places, like the country Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. The Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own territory. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much….
As to the writing, I would have to say it’s mixed. Some beautiful passages and then some I think really bad writing. Here’s some bad writing in y opinion:
Huh? Threats to her furniture? Come on. That is trying to be artsy with such a stretch that it’s ridiculous. And here:Quote:
She [Baby Kochamma] was frightened the BBC famines and television wars that she encountered while she channel surfed. her old fears of the Revolution and the Marxist-Leninist menace had been rekindled by the new television worries about the growing numbers of desperate and dispossessed people. She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine, and genocide as direct threats to her furniture. (p.28-9)
Hahaha, like a piece of tin? I can understand how words can come out jagged, but like a piece of tin? The comparison is ludicrous.Quote:
Rahel tried to say something. It came out jagged. Like a piece of tin. (p.29)
But there is good writing, even brilliant writing.
A little bit of a stretch with the imagery there, but I can really visualize that. And here’s another:Quote:
Aleyooty Ammachi looked more hesitant. As though she would have liked to turna around but couldn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t easy for her to abandon the river. With her eyes, she looked in the direction that her husband looked. With her heart she looked away. Her heavy, dull gold kunukku earings (tokens of the Little Blessed One’s Goodness) had stretched her earlobes and hung all the way down to her shoulders. Through the holes in her ears you could see the hot river and the dark trees that bent into it. And the fishermen in their boats. And the fish. (p. 30)
Nice!Quote:
In a purely practical sense it would probably be correct to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenen. Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for.
Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.
Still, to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenen is only one way of looking at it. (p. 32)
Well, no need because I already have! See post #4. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Oh I missed that. I think you wrote it before I started reading and never went back to that. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
You know I'm really getting into this novel. I'm about 40% through. She's done a wonderful job of laying down expectations and shifting through time. That scene in the fourth chapter where that Orange-Lemon Drink man makes Estha do what he does (unmentionable and repulsive) and Roy's contrasting that with the scene from The Sound of Music was brilliant and captivating. She is a really fine narrator. I wish she would curb her similies. I still find them ridiculous at times.
:lol: That is so terrible it is funny. But then you come across wonderful writing as this:Quote:
Comrade Pillai uncrossed his arms. His nipples peeped at Rahel over the top of the boundary wall like a sad St Bernard's eyes.
I just love how it builds to those two sentences, actually to the key words: "unbearable," "polarity," "irreconcible," "far-apartness."Quote:
Rahel searched her brother's nakedness for signs of herself. In the shape of his knees. The arch of his instep. The slope of his shoulders. The angle at which the rest of his arm met his elbow. The way his toe-nails tipped upwards at the ends. The sculpted hollows on either side of his taut, beatiful buns. Tight plums. Men's bums never grow up. Like school satchelss, they evoke in an instant memories of childhood. Two vaccination marks on his arm gleamed like coins. Hers were on her thigh.
Girls always have them on their thighs, Ammu used to say.
Rahel watched Estha with the curiosity of a mother watching her wet child. A sister a brother. A woman a man. A twin a twin.
She flew these several kites at once.
He was a stranger met in a chance encounter. He was the one that she had known before Life began. The one who had once led her (swimming) through their lovely mother's c***.
Both things unbearable in their polarity. In their irreconcible far-apartness.
One other thing. I am confused wth the historical stuff in the novel, especially the communists. I don't know the history of India and its flirtation with communism, but it seems integral to the work. Are the names Roy mentions(Comrade this and Comrade that) are they real historical figures or fictional? Can someone help me with this? I can't even tell whether Roy is sympathetic or comic or neutral with this.
This is a book i'll save for later. Started it once when i was 15, couldnt continue. Too many personifications and metaphors. I agree her language is pretty, but perhaps a bit too pretty for me to find interesting. So far I havent liked books that drags too much. This dragged and distracted. I'll probably give it a try after 3 years from now.
She seems rather critical of it, I think. I don't remember the comrades, so cannot help you out with that question, but there's this site about Indian communism that seems interesting:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/communism.html
*sighs* i really am a terrible participant of this read!! I will read it as soon as i've got the Twilight Saga out of my system.....:blush:
Roy is losing me in the second half of the novel. I won't get into it much now, but I just don't see the relationship between several narraitves. For instance what's Sophie Mol's story have to do with Rahel's and Estha's story? And others too. Perhaps she'll pull it together. But more on this later.
Finished!
Wait, was I supposed to announce here too that I had started it?
Well, damn!
Well, what did you think? You didn't vote.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taliesin
Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
What do you think now is Roy's purpose in switching back & forth among different time frames (and thus different narratives and characters)?
Easier to write?
I would have helped you on this, but unfortunately I am not reading this book, and dont know what about communism she is talking. I have this feeling that she is abstract in her writing. I somehow cant make myself want to read this book.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
3 more days and I can start reading - I'm swamped at the minute, and can't really do anything but homework and the occasional post here.
There are generally three reasons why writers do this. One is suspense, and this is from a writer's craft point of view. By holding off information while bring the narrative to beyond the time of climax, creates a certain tension. You grasp fragments of the ramifications of the events without knowing the total picture. Second, and this is from an aesthetic point of view, time itself becomes part of the theme. By the manipulation of time one can understand how the events of the novel are rooted in a time period. The novel is fluctuating back and forth between different moments in history. Three, and this is also aesthetic I guess, it recreates a temporal experience. When we thinnk back on our lives, moments in time merge, overlap, and intersect. Our lives may progress in linear time, but our experience of our lives does not.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
I think Roy is considering all three reasons here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I agree that the similies border on the overkill sometimes. But taken as a whole, I still think that Roy did an excellent job. In a way, her lucullan comparisons make me think of India. I have never been there but reading The God of Small Things reinforces my idea that it is a place that's extraordinarily rich in history, culture and local color; teeming with people and noise and temples richly decorated with gods sporting outlandish headdresses and possessing an extravagant number of limbs.
Past halfway, it's only now that I'm starting to warm to this novel. I would apply Virgil's remarks to the entire first half.
For me, Arundhati Roy's heavy imagery has been fading into oblivion for a reader with insufficient context to assimilate. As in 'The Tin Drum', we have these interminable descriptive passages that relate to nothing. Or must one read such books twice?Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Notwithstanding, I am now beginning to page back through the book to make sense of it all (Velutha, for instance), as I did three-quarter-way through The Tin Drum. As luck would have it, my library copy must be returned today!
On the positive side, I like Rahel, find Estha fascinating, and wonder about Sophie Mol, Velutha, Indian communism and the ‘Terror’.
Well, I finished the novel and it was a big disappointment. The first half of this novel was excellent. But soehow it veered off. Did I miss something? The trajectory of the first half of the novel was the relationship of Rahel and Estha, and the schism that was to happen to the twins. This cause of the schism was always held back and allowed the reader to wonder. Ok, but that is a dangerous strategy. If the cause is integrated with the plot, then it will work. But if the cause is added to the plot rather than integrated, then it’s a cheap trick. That’s what I feel has happened.
The cause of the schism turns out to be a taboo relationship between their mother and Velutha, a lighter skinned woman and a dark man of a lower caste. First, how original is that? A plot where white woman (brown in this case) has a relationship with a black man that leads to tragic consequences.. How many times have we seen that? Sure this is set in a specific Indian context of caste, but I’ve seen this plot many times in movies, TV no less. Hey this goes back to Othello.
Second, where was this ever developed in the first half? It was held back as a cheap trick. Which then is the main plot, the psychological development of Rahel and Estha’s being or the elicit relationship between Anmmu and Velutha? And which is the subplot? I can’t tell. When Shakespeare in King Lear has two plots running parallel (Lear’s and Gloucester’s) they intertwine and one is subordinated to the other. In the novel they are almost two separate stories. What does the incident of Estha and the Orange-Lemon drink man have to do with anything? That becomes just sensationalism in respect to the rest of the plot.
Third, the second half of the novel seems like it was largely telling rather than dramatizing. How many times are to have told to us that Velutha was “hounded by history”? This is telling. When the Inspector Mathew taps Ammu’s breasts, Roy writes: “It was a premeditated gesture, calculated to humiliate and terrorize her. An attempt to instill order in a world gone wrong.” “Instill order in a world gone wrong” is again telling the reader what to think. This is I’m afraid ideologically driven. She is telling you how to interpret the events because at the heart of this is a polemic.
Fourth, the style of characterization all of sudden changes in the second half. All of a sudden characters are not three dimensional; they become two dimensional. Police are inhuman brutes, Baby Kochamma is evil and a religious hypocrit, and the communists are corrupt. Check this passage:
(p. 248)Quote:
Inspector Thomas Mathew was a prudent man. He took one precaution. He sent a jeep to fetch Comrade K.N.M Pillai to the police station. It was crucial for him to know whether the Paravan had any political support or whether he was operating alone. Though he himself was a Congress man, he did not intend to risk any run-ins with the Marxist government. When Comrade Pillai arrived, he was ushered into the seat that Baby Kochamma had only recently vacated. Inspector Thomas Mathew showed him Baby Kochamma’s First Information Report. The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers and not words. No explanations seemed necessary. They were not friends, Comrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Mathew, and they didn’t trust each other. But they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly adult. They looked out at the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine.
Now first I don’t know how anyone can be both prudent and not have curiosity and not know how the world works. Second, they had a conversation that was “cryptic” and “to the point”? Huh? Cryptic and to the point are opposites. And why doesn’t she dramatis this, this being a crux of the plot? She summarizes rather than showing us because she has created cartoon characters and the more she dramatizes cartoons the worse the writing gets. Third, “terrifyingly adult”? Well that’s a rather childish statement on her part. They’re adults and to act otherwise is contrary to their nature. She could have said they lacked understanding or imagination, but to characterize as "terrorfying adults" just reflects a simple notion of humanity. Fourth, this reflects the ideological polemic of the novel, the cartoonish nature of the people she disagrees with (as if they didn’t have complex reasons for their actions) and the running of a “machine”. Isn’t that from a Pink Floyd song? The government is a “machine” that unimaginative adult, people run at the expense of the inspired powerless. How creative. :sick:
Fifth I’m at a loss at how the themes interact. If Roy is criticizing the caste system, why is the central family of the novel Christian? Do we ever understand why Ammu falls in love with Velutha? If this is such a taboo shouldn’t the narrative spend a great deal of time and space showing us why they love each other? Even in Othello, Shakespeare has a large passage of how and why Desdemona falls for Othello. And what does the fact that Rahel and Estha are twins and their psychic connection have to do with climatic events? And what about the added layer of Sophie Mol being an English girl? Now Roy is brining in another historical context (British imperialism of India) when she’s criticizing the caste system. Perhaps someone can explain the relationship between all these themes, but frankly they appear to me as a hodge-podge.
Sixth, wht in heaven’s name does “The God of Small Things” have to do with anything in the novel? What is that all about? Here’s that passage that Scher quoted:
(p. 20)Quote:
That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cosy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered.
I have no idea what she’s talking about given the context of the novel. What small things? These are big things that happened. Her high language rings hollow.
Seventh, the ending, after the climax, is cheap and tawdry. We see Ammu listening to a song that just coincidently captures her motivations. It's the Rolling Stones’ song, “Ruby Tuesday.”
(p. 314)Quote:
The words of the song exploded in her head.
There’s no time to lose
I heard her say
Cash your dreams before
They slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams and you
Will lose your mind.
Ammu drew her knees up and hugged them. She couldn’t believe it. The cheap coincidence of those words.
Yes, it’s very cheap, she said it herself, but even cheaper is the gratuitous sex that ends the novel. The incest between the twins is completely uncalled for, and the description of the sex between Ammu and Velutha borders on pornography. Did she have to be so explicit? No, it was gratuitous, like a movie scene. In fact the whole last chapter of that Ammu and Velutha scene rings like a flashback scene from a movie where there is Celtic music over a misty set of action of events that happened in a innocent pre-climatic time. The whole ending struck me as cheap.
At mid point in this novel I was ready to give this the highest rating. But slowly it got worse and worse and degenerated into a ideological polemic. I’m not from India, so I won’t comment on the ideology, but one can write an essay or if this is truly a problem there should hundreds of true life stories that would carry more impact. But certainly someone who disagrees with her ideology can write something that would rebut her points. For me, ideological polemics don’t make art. There were fine moments of writing in the novel. She does capture the family extremely well and at times she soars to great prose, even poetic prose. But then there are the silly similes too. For all that I wound up with a mid point rating. It’s ok.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
It was the aspect of suspense that especially worked for me. The swinging back & forth of the timetables created a sort of jigsaw puzzle in my mind and I was very eager to read on and watch the separate pieces fall into their rightful places and form a unified picture.
I'm still wondering what Pappachi's moth is symbolic of vis-a-vis Rahel's (and perhaps Estha's also) sentiments and experiences.
There are so many symbols and metaphors that they trip over each other. Moth, God of Small Things, others I can't recall. It feels like Roy's trying so hard to be literary. Too hard. It got annoying after a while.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
Just finished, though unsure how to vote. The symbols and metaphors endlessly trip over each other.
The god of small things relates to conscience and personal responsibility: the inner god of integrity. More literally, Velutha is the god giving 'a catapult, an inflatable goose, a Qantas koala with loosened button eyes': the god of the small children.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Isn't betrayal the cause of the schism? Betrayal of the Paravan, of friendship, of conscience, of one's very humanity, of the god of small things. The maternal betrayal inherent in "That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
The same betrayal or cowardice is at work here: 'she’d [Ammu] love him less as well'. Sensitive Estha's lack of moral courage begins to silence him forever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
The police and the communists, not unreasonably, believe Velutha (god of small things giving little presents to twins) to be a rogue rapist. Culturally susceptible, they are deceived by the nasty and unambiguously neurotic Baby Kochamma, as are Chacko, Estha and Rachel later.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I think the novel is less about politics, the caste system or sex-staved Ammu's love affair than about the instability inherent in all human relationships: ‘they begin to love you less’.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Incest? I, like Baby Kochamma, understand this heroic encounter as a display of illicit empathy in a world frozen by alienation, well illustrated by Catholic Kochamma and her estranged priest, a Hindu convert!Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Even cheaper, crackling through Ammu's tangerine transistor. So is the fool-hardy sex act with the under-age(?) 15-year-old outcast. How likeable is Ammu? How likeable are adults?Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Past halfway, I could finally read thirty pages at a sitting, slowly unscrambling the metaphors, time-lines and plot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
The moth represents for Rachal the bitterness of hopes unfulfilled: 'A cold moth lifted a cold leg'. Pappachi's discovery of a new species of moth was dismissed and later credited to others.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
Thanks for all your cmments Gladys. You read this very carefully. :) Let me see if I can respond to one or two.
"The god of small things relates to conscience and personal responsibility," well that is interesting. I guess that could be, but what does Velutha "being a god of small children" have to do with that?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gladys
No I would say the taboo is the heart of the events and the paravan's betrayal a mechanism of the plot.Quote:
Isn't betrayal the cause of the schism? Betrayal of the Paravan, of friendship, of conscience, of one's very humanity, of the god of small things. The maternal betrayal inherent in "That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
Oh perhaps it fits thematically in some way, I don't doubt that, but the event is (a) so dramatic that one would certainly think it central to the events and (b) she spends so much narrative time on it that it seems to be the thrust of the novel itself. The shift from the children's story to that of Ammu and Velutha's story is what is disorienting and I think makes the novel flawed.Quote:
The same betrayal or cowardice is at work here: 'she’d [Ammu] love him less as well'. Sensitive Estha's lack of moral courage begins to silence him forever.
I'm sorry I just disagree. When I say politics i don't mean political parties per se. I mean she's got a social activist's agenda.Quote:
I think the novel is less about politics, the caste system or sex-staved Ammu's love affair than about the instability inherent in all human relationships: ‘they begin to love you less’.
Yes, toward the second to last chapter the brother and sister commit incest. I found that completely gratuitous.Quote:
Incest? I, like Baby Kochamma, understand this heroic encounter as a display of illicit empathy in a world frozen by alienation, well illustrated by Catholic Kochamma and her estranged priest, a Hindu convert!