November / India Reading: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

[Virgil]

I don't know: 'Anything can happen to Anyone'.

Her spokesman for the caste system, Vellya Paapen, is particularly unpalatable. Victimising people by social group or cultural heritage seems to parallel slavery in the West.

Sure. But the two dimensionality of the characters who disagree makes this polemic not art.

I confess my last two posts on incest have been cryptic; Roy's imagery is so extreme. No incest occurs between the twins (and even if it does, the incest is sacred like Ammu's affair)

Oh you're saying it didn't occur and it was a metaphor? I don't see how that is possible.

Incest is metaphor for two damaged souls communicating, Estha silently and Rachel, alone in a bedroom: deep heartfelt solidarity between two innocents who have lost their way in a hostile world. Such honest communication between of souls is cultural heresy, almost a cultural 'incest', according to the likes of Baby Kochamma; a solidarity as a much taboo as inter-caste sexual relations.

Wow, you're going to have to explain that. Certainly it's cultural heresy. That's what taboo is. I don't understand how or what they are communicating. Here's the passage that leads up to it:

There is very little that anyone could say to clarify what happened next. Nothing that (in Mammachi's book) would separate Sex from Love. Or Needs from Feelings.

Except perhaps that no Watcher watched through Rahel's eyes. No one stared out the window at the sea. Or a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.

Except perhaps that it was a little cold. A little wet. But very quiet. The Air.

But waht was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptyness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semi-circle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not hapiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. They lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

I guess they are communicating grief. But really did Roy need to do that?

The union of the beneficent god, Velutha, with the children and their mother breaks both taboos: the implicit and the (sexually) explicit. The gracious god has spiritual intercourse with the twins and their mother, and sexual intercourse with Ammu. God with man; untouchable with touchable.

That is an interesting thought. Perhaps. I don't see any sexual context of Velutha with the twins, but perhaps I missed it. But frankly this just adds more confusion to the themes that Roy is dramatizing. Like the metaphors, it all seems to trip over themselves. But let me say, I am not from Indian culture and I am not particularly school on it. It may be going over my head.

Genesis 1:31___And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

I don't see the connection that quote has here. I'm confused with that reference.

Your remarks, in bold, hit the nail on the head. The 'sacred/spiritual experience' shared by the twins amounts to social defiance and a sharing in their mother's experience of taboo.

I still fail to see the twin's incest or even their psychological development as a sacred/spiritual experience. It strikes me it's all within a social context, the here and now. If anything, the caste system (though I really know little of Hinduism so take this with a grain of salt) is rooted within the sacred/spiritual. The story is a breaking down of the spiritual/sacred, not just a breaking down but a stamping out.

[bouquin]

This suggests a social defiance, not a sacred/spiritual experience. They are replicating their mother's central core of experiencing taboo. Almost as if there is a psychic connection with their mother, though perhaps I'm stretching a bit with that last thought. It's almost as if the disappointment and saddness that has run through their lives for the 23 years after the climatic event can only be relieved with this act. Frankly that's gratuitous to me. Come on, lots of events shape children, but to think they will have incest because of it, well that's just melodramatic.

I admit that when I got to the part of the incest my first reaction was, was this really necessary to the story? I'm still of the opinion that the incident was rather needless... but on the other hand, Ammu and her clan are rather a curious lot and they have been through some harrowing experiences... so who knows where the consequences would lead them? Anyway, the family is on the road to perdition, it seems obvious to me, so perhaps the incest thing was a kind of final nail to seal the coffin, so to speak. Because I don't see it at all as redemptive.

I considered the Ammu-Velutha taboo relationship audacious and even heroic... sacred, in a sense. There was beauty in it. To put it in the same basket as the act committed by Rahel & Estha was to demean it, I think. I was quite disappointed with that.

[Virgil]

I considered the Ammu-Velutha taboo relationship audacious and even heroic... sacred, in a sense. There was beauty in it. To put it in the same basket as the act committed by Rahel & Estha was to demean it, I think. I was quite disappointed with that.

Yes I agree, and I would say it was heroic. But don't you find it odd that its hardly developed,let alone suggested, until the second half of the novel. I just find this novel incorrectly plotted. Theorectically Roy should have interweaved the Ammu/Velutha relationship with the Rahel/Estha psychological development. Why did she hold back the Ammu/Velutha relationship as a mystery? Here's my guess: The taboo relationship between a whitish, high society girl with a lower class dark man has been done to death and Roy was striving for some form of originality. Where she couldn't be original in story line, she tried to be original in plot. But plot is a dangerous thing to be original in. Plots have to have an internal logic, much like a sentence. If you veer off the path of known plot then it better make complete sense. I don't think Roy's structure and even some major details (like a Christian family at the heart of a story about the caste system or the whole Orange-Lemon Drink man incident, and I still have no idea what communism has to do with any thing in the novel) confuse her themes. Despite some lovely passages, some fine characterizations, some wonderfully detailed narrative, the novel feels flawed. Roy tried to be overly literary when she just needed to tell the story.

One other thing. I'm not against social themes being put into novels, but they have to capture the complexity of the situation. It can't be those who agree with me are the good guys and those who are agianst me are the bad guys. That kind of equation is in every day politics. A novel, if it's a work of art, must capture a moment, a full experience, the totality of life, even if one has a decided position. Roy's treatment of anyone that disagrees with her ideas was two dimensional. That's why I feel this novel degenerated from art into polemic.

[Gladys]

Days after reading, my enthusiasm for ‘The God of small things’ is soaring. The after-taste beats the drinking.

All are fickle and survive in a universe of spasmodic betrayal and intolerance, where people ‘begin to love you less’. Characters aren’t simply two dimensional, good or evil, Virgil, except possibly the boy-god Velutha. As a divine creator, it is true of Velutha that 'god saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good'. He, like Jesus, was a carpenter - a maker 'of small things' - and a scapegoat who suffered, died and was buried…his footprints swept away.

Isaiah 53:3___He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him.

Religious and political ideologies – Catholic, Hindu or Communist – are ‘big things’ that fall victim to human nature and prove barren. Similarly, cultural practices, caste systems, moral standards, legal codes and Love Laws degrade rather than uplift and are flawed ‘for practical purposes, in a hopelessly practical world’. Even sons of the deities, Karna and Bhima, savage their relatives. I’m reminded of John Lennon’s ‘I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality’.

Authenticity ‘in small things’ is a consistent theme, extending to incest between Estha and Rahal or the Paravan paedophilia of Ammu – taboos broken by those with no legal standing, no ‘Locusts Stand-I'. If incest is not redemptive, Bouquin, at least flakes of kindness communicate between damaged souls stranded in silence and 'hideous grief': two, lonely fugitives from ‘the Heart of Darkness’ and its ‘Love Laws’. Are others more virtuous? Who?

Like it or not, a pathetic reality abides in the bitterness of Pappachi (John Ipe), an imperial entomologist robbed of a moth; the detachment of blind Mammachi; the meagre harvest of two sad paedophiles, the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man and Kari Saipu; the elicit consummation of the long-divorced Ammu; the unrealised hopes of Sophie Mol; the pathetic aspirations of Vellya Paapen, the drunk untouchable; the schadenfreude of the chronically disappointed Baby Kochamma; the shallow expediencies of Comrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Mathew; the blinkered, mob violence of six Touchable Policemen; the betrayed beneficence of fifteen-year-old Velutha; the latter-day violence of the peacemaker Chacko, a Rhodes Scholar with Marxist ideals; the slapping, slapping Margaret Kochamma; and a silent, incestuous and hideous Holy Communion between the sensitive Estha (now re-Returned) and Rahal partaking of the sacrificed Paravan, Paschal lamb.

Mathew 7:1___Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Life rarely measures up. Taboos abound and many (characters and readers alike) stand ready to cast the first stone at glimmers of beauty, at shards of translucent, muted jade. Sensitive Estha, singing guilelessly during ‘The Sound of Music’, comes to see this too clearly and seeks shelter in silence: 'Prepare to prepare to be prepared'. Arundhati Roy never explicitly passes judgment on any character, preferring instead to say, “It wasn’t entirely their fault”.

That ‘Anything can happen to Anyone’ is also reflected in the seemingly haphazard structure and imagery of the novel. Even the words and sentences of Arundhati Roy sometimes solidify only in retrospect, just as repercussions for living are appreciated only in hindsight. We survive on hope.

‘Tomorrow’…at best.

[Virgil]

Wonderful defense of the novel Gladys. This does make sense and does amplify my respect for the novel.

Authenticity ‘in small things’ is a consistent theme, extending to incest between Estha and Rahal or the Paravan paedophilia of Ammu – taboos broken by those with no legal standing, no ‘Locusts Stand-I'. If incest is not redemptive, Bouquin, at least flakes of kindness communicate between damaged souls stranded in silence and 'hideous grief': two, lonely fugitives from ‘the Heart of Darkness’ and its ‘Love Laws’. Are others more virtuous? Who?

I do think novel is flawed structurally. And I do disagree with this:

Arundhati Roy never explicitly passes judgment on any character, preferring instead to say, “It wasn’t entirely their fault”.

Perhaps she doesn't personally pass judgement on any character, but her dramatization/characterization does. There is no question in my mind about that. Perhaps she intended not to pass judgement, but then her skill as a writer was lacking there. The two dinesionality of most of the other characters, the characterization of Baby Kachamma and Maamachi (I forget the actual names now) and the inspector and the communist. Their dramatization is clearly intended for one not to see their side.

[Pensive]

Completed if finally.

There have been so many comments since I last posted. Good to see that the book has initiated some discussion, just had to skim through most of the posts though. But I guess I will have to read them when I have more time.

As for my impression of the novel after having completed it, I find it a bit disappointing. Not as good as I expected it to be. There are loop-holes in the story as Virgil mentioned, how Ammu fell in love with Velutha, and the significance of that Lemonade Man. I especially disliked the sex scene between Velutha and Ammu in the end, and I agree with what Virgil said about it. Quite pornographic.

The coincidental way the song was being played at that time was also a bit cheap. It reminded me of the HP series fanfiction I used to read online.

Also I noticed later that there were some expressions used more than once and which when read for once though were interesting but on repetition they lost their charm. For instance something like this 'it was as wrinkled as a dhobi's finger when it was out of water' (am afraid have forgotten the exact phrase).

Most importantly, what's the connection of the title with the whole plot? I have still not been able to understand that. Sometimes, it seems that the author is referring to Velutha as The God of Small Things, but in what context I am unable to figure out...

But despite of all this and the fact that the way the events shifted through time annoyed me, I basically enjoyed it (perhaps not as much as I had expected to, but still pretty much) because of the level of curiosity that sprung inside me while reading it.

[NEEMAN]

I read this about a month ago for college. I won't go into any in depth analysis, as it's late and I have an exam tomorrow (TGoST will probably be on it), but my thoughts are pretty much as follows: amazing writing at times; the first few pages are some of the most visual and evocative I have ever read. The second half of the novel doesn't match the high standard of the first, and as a result, though not bad taken by itself, it makes the novel feel inconsistent.

I also felt the climax of the novel (pardon the pun) was a little abrupt. Of course, this may have been intentional, but for me, it wasn't very satisfying.

Still, a book you should read, if only to appreciate just how luscious Roy's writing is in places.

[Gladys]

Perhaps she doesn't personally pass judgement on any character, but her dramatization/characterization does. There is no question in my mind about that.

You make a telling observation that makes one think.

With the probable exception of divine Velutha, Arundhati Roy passes judgement of all her characters. Yet she reserves the mildest judgment for the less than likeable Ammu, a fornicating paedophile, and her incestuous twins, Estha and Rahal, who once denied their dying god, Velutha. How harshly does she judge the sister-bashing Chacho and the Estha-slapping Margaret Kochamma? For other respectable and law-abiding citizens she offers little positive. Surely this paradox is a deliberate irony: who exactly are God’s elect?

Romans 3:23___For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God [Velutha].

The two dimensionality of most of the other characters, the characterization of Baby Kochamma and Mammachi...and the inspector and the communist. Their dramatization is clearly intended for one not to see their side.

If two dimensional, why do I sympathise with them all? I may not like them but can understand much of their motivation and their prejudice:

The aging Baby Kochamma, pathetically obsessive and impulsive from childhood, still a baby, is unlucky in love and 'frightened by the BBC famines and television wars that she encountered while she channel surfed'.

Mammachi is beaten frequently by Pappachi 'with a brass flower vase'', the snapped bow of her gleaming violin thrown in the river. 'Her brass-vase scars.'

Inspector Thomas Mathew had believed Velutha was a rapist. Comrade Pillai's wife, Kalyani, had died of ovarian cancer. 'He walked through the world like a chameleon. Never revealing himself, never appearing not to. Emerging through chaos unscathed.' 'It was he who had introduced the twins to kathakali at the temple.' The narrator says of the inspector and the communist, '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.'

Luke 18:26___And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?

[Virgil]

You make a telling observation that makes one think.

With the probable exception of divine Velutha, Arundhati Roy passes judgement of all her characters.

I see. But don't you feel that Velutha isn't even developed? I know nothing about him, or at least anything memorable.

Yet she reserves the mildest judgment for the less than likeable Ammu, a fornicating paedophile, and her incestuous twins, Estha and Rahal, who once denied their dying god, Velutha. How harshly does she judge the sister-bashing Chacho and the Estha-slapping Margaret Kochamma? For other respectable and law-abiding citizens she offers little positive. Surely this paradox is a deliberate irony: who exactly are God’s elect?

ou're quite persuasive. Good points.

Romans 3:23___For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God [Velutha].

Perhaps I should have been more persistent in looking for Christian alusions. As you point out this is a very Christian novel.

If two dimensional, why do I sympathise with them all? I may not like them but can understand much of their motivation and their prejudice:

The aging Baby Kochamma, pathetically obsessive and impulsive from childhood, still a baby, is unlucky in love and 'frightened by the BBC famines and television wars that she encountered while she channel surfed'.

Mammachi is beaten frequently by Pappachi 'with a brass flower vase'', the snapped bow of her gleaming violin thrown in the river. 'Her brass-vase scars.'

Inspector Thomas Mathew had believed Velutha was a rapist. Comrade Pillai's wife, Kalyani, had died of ovarian cancer. 'He walked through the world like a chameleon. Never revealing himself, never appearing not to. Emerging through chaos unscathed.' 'It was he who had introduced the twins to kathakali at the temple.' The narrator says of the inspector and the communist, '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.'

Luke 18:26___And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?

For some reason I could not engage with the characters in the second half of the novel. Once I felt that the focus of the story had shifted from the development of the twins to the tragic love affair, I kind of felt cheated. But I will say this is a better novel than I initially voted based on your comments Gladys. It does seem to hold together intellectually. If there were a middle catagory between average and a good book I would have chosen it. Actually it is a good book, just not a perfect one.

[Gladys]

But don't you feel that Velutha isn't even developed?

How does anyone develop a God? Regarding Velutha, Virgil, we do know that:

1 John 4:16___God is love.

For some reason I could not engage with the characters in the second half of the novel.

So many have said this, but for me it was the opposite. I almost gave up a third way in. But I'm a slow reader.

[JBI]

What's the verdict on this, worth reading over the December book you think?

[NEEMAN]

It's definitely worth reading; the style is pretty unique. You probably won't like some aspects of it (I've yet to meet someone IRL who thought the book was a 95%er), but she can really write. I have a feeling this is a book that will age very well- I would't be surprised to see it getting name checked for a long time to come.


That said, I haven't read The Map of Love, so really I'm just blathering on without being of any help whatsoever. END COMMUNICATION